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Sunday, 9 October 2016

Privilege and Entitlement in Denial - Tabor & Alexander

Poor Dr. James Tabor. He "almost drove off the road" when he heard the interview with Jerald Walker (see earlier story).

"what he said about Mr. Armstrong and the Church as a whole was completely incorrect and bogus--that only "Whites" would be in the Kingdom of God, that blacks were an inferior species, and on and on...I realize the WCG had its flaws but this is very unfortunate. Most of us in the academic field of Religious Studies object to the label of "cult" for any religion anyway--the problem is who is doing the labeling."

Completely incorrect and bogus? What's James been smoking? Technically you can indeed argue that "officially" WCG taught no such thing, but most of us know that the reality in the pulpit and pews was far, far different. The racist culture in WCG was undeniable, even as far away as Auckland, New Zealand where Frederick "Jack" Croucher made comments from the pulpit that demeaned Black people and Maori, delivered with a laugh. It was the "Israelites" who would have pride of place in the super-fascist World Tomorrow. Doesn't James remember what his onetime mentor Rod Meredith preached and wrote?

As for the use of the word 'cult', I tend to agree with Tabor. It's a loaded term with multiple meanings and scholars tend to avoid such pejorative terms, leaving them to popular writers who have an ax to grind. But Walker isn't a religious academic, and in the context of his personal experience I'm not about to tell him not to use it.

Racing in to back up Tabor - from the good lord knows where - comes a voice from the distant past, Gary Alexander, a former Plain Truth writer and author of a dismal little booklet called The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Alexander has had a checkered career post WCG, covered in some depth back in Ambassador Report 27 (April 1984), subhead "Alexander does prison time".

"In these days of high racial tension, fueled in large part by everyone taking pictures of everything and extrapolating each incident into an overarching trend, readers assume everything Jerrald [sic] Walker says must be true, but he was not in the belly of the beast, as we were. He didn't understand our teachings. He was, as the book excerpt cited above shows, a kid who peaked [sic] out the window on Halloween and wished that he were allowed to trick-and-treat, like any other kid."

And so Alexander, who like Tabor was part of the self-entitled elite "back in the day", demeans and devalues Walker's experience... he was just "a kid" who wanted to do trick and treat. That's a horrible and completely facile misrepresentation.

No, Jerald Walker clearly wasn't "in the belly of the beast." Excuse the French, but that's the whole bloody point. The vile influence on lay members - and especially kids - of church culture and teaching, especially given the off the cuff remarks and climate of contempt for imagined 'non-Israelites'. Walker is telling it as he remembers it, and as it impacted on his life and that of his family. His is an honest account of what it was like growing up in the Chicago church. Tabor and Alexander might want to hide behind official teaching, but what was official teaching in a time when the 'truth' was whatever was served up in the pulpit, in church magazines and booklets that were often re-edited, withdrawn and replaced?These were the days before the Systematic Theology Project (STP), and many of us remember what happened to that.

Alexander pleads for old timers to head off to Amazon and give a 'balanced' review of Walker's book. As I wrote a couple of days ago, I've heard a lot of folk deny that the Worldwide Church of God was inherently racist, let alone "white supremacist." But as I recollect, none of them grew up as African-Americans in the bonds of their parent's beliefs. Tabor isn't listening. Nor, obviously, is Alexander.

And that's a very different starting place from individuals who enjoyed a place of privilege and entitlement in the church. Dr. Tabor and Mr. Alexander might consider that carefully before continuing in knee-jerk mode.

146 comments:

When I entered the fold in the mid-60s there was implicit teaching about the benefits of racial separation. This was impractical in congregations with very few non-whites, but inter-racial marriages were discouraged and certain minorities were encouraged to attend designated Feast sites to enable fellowshipping for minorities such as Hispanics. All this seemed to fade away in the early 70s as more divisive theological issues arose which threatened to fragment the church in other ways.

Garner Ted Armstrong during the 1958 Feast of Tabernacles, telling a joke to, oh I don't know, maybe 5,000 people, in which the word "niggers" was part of the punchline. My parents really freaked at that one and told us kids they'd certainly better never hear us repeat the joke or the word! Watching the deacons at that same Feast roping off seats for the "colored" section at the AC fun show.

Listening to Gerald Waterhouse sermons, in which a hierarchy was established for the main racial groups around the world, supposedly helping us visualize what God's chain of command would look like in the millennium. Guess who was on top, and who was on the bottom.

Having it drummed into our heads in multiple sermons that God was going to put an end to racism once and for all by sending the different races back to their homelands when Christ returns. Translated: All the "negroes" are going back to Africa. HWA thundered, "God's way is the way of segregation. And this was before the modern era in which huge numbers of people now list their racial status as "multi-ethnic". Now, such segregation would be all but impossible. Oops, forgot! If you have any noticeable African traits, your church will impliment your worst fears!

All white SEP for probably the first 5-6 years. Mr. Meredith stating in sermons during the late '60s that the Feds might come after the church unless we caved on our principles and began to allow black and Mexican kids into Imperial Schools. No non-whites at AC unless they were married students living off campus (this had finally changed by the time my youngest brother attended AC).

Revisionists have stated that all of these factors were part of the zeitgeist of the times. However, true to "Philadelphian"'form, Armstrongism was very zealous with these practices, went way beyond what was practiced in most of the USA, and was much slower to change. They blamed their reticence about matching the progress of the Civil Rights movement on God's "true" principles. Some of the ministers actually used the derogatory nickname Martin "Lucifer" King when preaching about racial matters in their sermons.

I have no idea what Gary Alexander's status in life may be at this point. I assume he's probably retired. But if Jerald Walker's book becomes a best seller, "Ambassador College" on Dr. Tabor's resume may raise some serious questions.

Jerald Walker's book would be an interesting read like most of your personal experiences are interesting to read.

However the book seems to majorly fall short on a basic understanding of wcg "doctrine" the pervasive American culture/ as compared to other parts of the world where wcg was active and worse a major misunderstanding on the (19th century contemporary) philosophies wcg was founded on. But I do understand. (Thomas More's Utopia has been widely misunderstood by most scholars, because they left large parts out of the small booklet while interpreting.) It is impossable to interpret wcg doctrine without understanding the history of quakerism, Utopian thinking from the time of Thomas More, Millenialism, Presbytarianism, The rise of fundametalism in the 1930's. etc

For example. For many people the pasadena campus was a neatly trimmed garden with some crisp buildings.

How many actually took the time to study the principles of Garett Eckbo, The names and intent of the resident sculptures, the philosophy behind modernist west coast building and how Mendenhall's conceptual philosophy matched that of the sponsor of the buildings.

Unfortunately the basic fault of "utopianism" seems to be that utopia as a concept is always about the other conforming and loosing ones individuality, while the leaders keep to maintain their individuality.

My point is.That if an Australian, New Zealander or Brit would deny my exegis of contemporary American Culture and would state that it was rampant in their experience also. Then it would still not constitute the "doctrinal, phylosophical" truth but just confirm the racism in the entire Anglo Saxon world.

You just cannot deny the many many members in black Africa, South America, Mexico, Germany and other "Gentile nations." I believe there would never have been members in those countries if the former wcg preaching "racism" as doctrine.

And I am saying this as a person who has experienced that racism myself. I am 100% sure I would not have been there for 1 second if I had not understood the racism as a flaw of the Anglo Saxon brethren who had invented the "concentration camp in the 1880's to imprison the white Boers." (Or the comments on blacks in the original 7 laws of succes as a 1950's cultural flaw of the writer.) If true racism was ever published in a booklet I would have known and would have left in an instant. But there was none, other than culture bias.

I invite James Tabor and anyone who may want to, for want of a better term, whitewash the WCG past rabid racism during the Reign of Armstrong... to read my WHOLE excruciatingly documented blog series on the "Wonderful World Tomorrow, What it Won't Be Like," and then get back to me with their pathetic excuses for it all, and their "reasoning" why using the term "Abusive Cult" to describe that insanity is somehow "invalid". (But don't be addressing the material if you AREN'T willing to read it ALL.) I was a member of WCG for a decade (1968-1978) and have spent the past 20+ years researching and documenting the CULT'S literature and culture. They are more than welcome to play with their own little narrow "definition" of cult if it makes them feel "intellectually superior" to those who use it more broadly. Frankly, I am not impressed with that type of "intellectualism."

Well, Gary Alexander fit right in with the WCG way of seeing things from the colonizer's point of view. I remember one Plain Truth apartheid-era article where the author (Ronald Kelly, Robert Fahey?)commiserated with the interview, a government official, who plaintively asked why the media didn't talk about the good things in South Africa. Similarly, one pastor, an otherwise really good guy with a few major blind spots, condemned the apartheid riots on the news because the mostly men in them were reasonably well-fed and clothed, and therefore had no real beef, according to scripture (if we have food and clothing we will be content). I don't think he realized what it would have meant to live in an environment where, for example, it would have been against the law to live with your mate if they belonged to a different African tribe than you.

Believing itself to be from British-Israel stock, the church, for all its talk about brotherly love, couldn't see its own racism. And you don't have to have feelings of hatred or animosity to be a racist. You just have to think that things are as they should be. It was kind of like when we'd read the scripture about the Kingdom of Heaven, in which there would be neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female--but for right now things are just the way they are, so everybody just settle down, okay?

Gary Alexander would get alone great with Mike Pence, who thinks it's just a big mistake to examine institutional bias/racism . . .

It would seem that much of this question could be settled by the 1960s Plain Truth about the race question: It is clear what the Radio Church of God thought about Negros back then.

There are those who believe that the reason for the racism of Herbert Armstrong against black people was because he didn't have any real contact with them. Those who read his autobiography realize that this is not the case. He had an unfortunate diversion from his career track be becoming a bookkeeper for a southern firm where he had opportunity to observe black people. He commented on how brightly colored the clothing of the women were. He also noted that the men were less than protestant white in their work ethic. They'd deliberately get injured on the job to make claims and avoid work and there were other things which offended Herbert's sensitivities. It is little wonder that there was only one black evangelist ever, Harold Jackson. It is also little wonder about the expression of how Herbert felt when Michael Lord sang in the Auditorium. As far as Herbert Armstrong and racism, British Israelism was just icing.

I well remember a different racism expressed in Seattle in the 1960s by Bill McDowell. He commented that the American Indian was of a degenerate race which should have been wiped out by American settlers (as sort of a representation of Israelites coming into the land of Canaan). Of course (now it's my time to be racist), he should talk, having been descended from the Irish -- a degenerative race of alcoholics. So there!

It's absolutely disgusting how far off from Christianity Armstrongism is: What?!?!! No Jew or Greek? No bond or free?

In a pig's eye!

Next time we can discuss sexism.

Or better yet, we can discuss the pernicious ever present problem of alcoholism in Armstrongism.

We can also look at the result of the supposed benign belief of British Israelism which was a root of the cause of the separatist tragedy.

One way to look at is that British Israelism isn't just not benign, it's not just stupid, it can be dangerous. And yes, of course, Ruby Ridge was the United States Government's fault -- but without British Israelism, it would have never happened.

Byker Bob and The Old Man have nailed it. Byker Bob, I remember GTA telling that joke in Squaw Valley. I don't recall the roped off seating, but I do remember hearing that the black members used to be shuttled off to Big Sandy, Texas for the FOT--for their own happiness, because there would be so many more of them there. I do remember a sermon by Carlton Green where he mentioned being hired to work at food services at AC and the anguish and shame he felt at being told that his black children could not attend Imperial Schools (what an ironic name, now that I think of it).

nck, I lived with a black woman--a church member--for a year, and she never mentioned thinking that the church was racist, even though when she was baptized, our pastor told her that she would probably never marry because there weren't very many black men in the church, and fewer still of her upwardly mobile caliber. The other thing that comes to mind right now is that when she offered to let me move in with her and the other two young women who were her housemates, she asked me if my parents knew that she was black, and were okay with the idea of my living with one. My mom was friends with another black lady and I knew my non-member dad wouldn't have given it a thought one way or another. It's like I said, though, about the church. When racism is built into its policies, and you're on the right side of those policies, you don't have to have "feelings" of racism to be a racist.

Pam, I rank among the great investigating journalist. Espcecially her report on the Oklahoma black people and well, actually all of it is very good.

I still have seen no evidence that hwa or wcg was just 10 percent behind what was the norm in the United States in general in a specific time frame. WWII had no black persons in combat positions. RadioCG was of course not progressive in this regard at all, that is in the nature of the "fundamentalist" beast.

Of course RCG was racist AS was and IS American society as a whole. (And especially SEXIST, since Trump is no exception.)

Just the single fact that there was (albeit only 1) black Evangelist in WCG what was considered a very high position as we know, proves without a doubt that genetically black people were not excluded as they would have been in KKK. The sociological question is of course entirely different and if I were to hand out pullitzers. Pam would get one.

And yes I met extremely racist and sexist people during my tenure. And yes I always deliberately infringed upon the rule to not dance with "other" races also and especially in the sight of tens of ministers and their horrible wives who I consider worse. No one ever had tried to correct me because of my class. It was all class driven sociological racism.

But a "beast-man" would never have been an evangelist.Still BI can be cause to blow up government buildings in OKC, but that is the BI kind where people are excluded of everything because of their genetic make up.

Let me specify class before being misunderstood.That is education and potential.

Therefore my somewhat crass remark on ministers wives. I would delete it if possible.

Pam has shown great class in her writing.Anyone should MAKE time to read Pam's musings. I just beg to differ somewhat on wcg analysis and institutionalized and societal racism.

RCG was WAY behind on what we now consider racism.RCG was actually WAY PROGRESSIVE on egalitarianism UNTIL it expanded internationally and British notions on race and class entered the fold. The British expansion changed RCG to the core. From egalitarian to class conscious in such that rugged Kentucky boys started to behave like fratboys after receiving limited education.

And since this site is mostly visited by Aussies.All this hindsight deliberation about the American RCG is about a time when aboriginal children were separated from their parents to enhance their potential through education. In retrospect this practice is to be judged as fascist cultural genocide. At the time is seemed a good idea. I can imagine a driven scottish presbyterian bloke like hwa being annoyed by the perceived "laziness' of the grandchildren of slaves. In the end he spent (from our purses) millions at home and abroad to education in programs designed to improve the lives of people of many colors. I believe I met one inuit at AC. He kicked my ass when I called him an Eskimo. Is he writing a book now on his "racist" encounter with me? Perhaps. I hope he is well.

The racism of the WCG was always couched in defensive, pseudo-Biblical language by its leaders and ministry. The supremacy of the Israelites was a "blessing". Segregation was a "blessing". The Blacks being sent back to Africa was a "blessing". This was the theory. And when you cry "racism", they don't know what you are talking about.

But the theory led to practice and the practice was simple-minded racism among the lay membership. It was about strict segregation with the best provision being made for the "Israelites." It was about violently exterminating Native Americans, Maori, Australian Aborigines, Lapplanders, Hawaiians and South African Blacks. It was about how a Black lay member who was an outstanding speaker could not be president of Spokesman Club and some white local elder with a poor command of English should be. This list, if we wanted to exhaustively compile one, would be almost endless.

Maybe Tabor objects to the use of White Supremacy on a technical basis. His views are so redolent with denial one feels that some excuse need be supplied. Technically Armstrongists are not White Supremacists just as the Nazi's were not White Supremacists. The Nazi racial pseudo-scientists did not believe that all Whites were superior. Just Germans. They felt that the Slavs were subhumans and should be enslaved by the Deutsche Volk. This is ironic because genetically the Central and Eastern Germans and the Slavs are all dominated by people of the same haplogroup R1A. (Hitler himself was E1b and was of North African extraction.)

Likewise, WCG believed not in White Supremacy but in Israelitish Supremacy. White Gentiles (Italians, Spanish, Germans, Slavs) were a lesser species. But the WCG, like the Nazi pseudo-scientists, believed that in the racial hierarchy, the Whites occupied the upper tiers but did not attain to the supreme station. That was reserved for Israelites in one case and Germans in the other.

While the WCG ministry disingenuously might characterize this racism as a "blessing", the typical bigoted, shallow, slack-jawed Southerner who heard this would know it for what it is - the story that he always wanted the Bible to tell.

To me it is no coincidence that your EXACT line up of these peoples coincides with American restriction on emigration in the early 1900. (1920-1930). Your logic on a subconscious level exactly mirrors restrictions implimented at the foundation dates of "fundamentalism", the restrictions on immigrants from CATHOLIC nations and yes people there we have it, the founding of rcg.

I might also add that after the Slavic incursions in Saxon territory most villages remained segregated. There were Slavic towns and Germanic towns. Later vice versa with the German incursions in what we now call Rumania and Hungary, German towns remained segregated from Slavic towns. It is only in recent history that people mix freely. Not so in 1100 ad.

BI could never really accommodate White Gentiles in America well. One theory was that the USA was populated by Manassites no matter where they might have come from in Europe. The other theory is that Italian-Americans, German-Americans, etc. were Gentiles. The former says that the Whites in America are racially pure. The latter says that America is a melting pot. My guess is that the former is the most likely idea to be advocated by Armstrongists and it is also the easiest to disprove. (An interesting third option I heard advocated by an Armstrongist is that the American Nation started with the melting pot but God miraculously converted the White Gentiles in America to Israelites. Hence, racial purity among the Whites in America.)

While the cultural differences may be large, the racial differences among the white European peoples is not great. They are, from country to country, an amalgam of haplogroups R1b and R1a with elements of E1b, I and G thrown in. The Scandinavians possess a streak of Asiatic Siberian - haplogroup N. These are for the most part Indo-European (that is a linguistic term, the racial term is Eurasian) tribes. And they are not Jews. In the genetic hierarchy of the human genome, R1a and R1b are not even close to Jews. And the Key to Biblical Prophecy and who can sit where at the Feast of Tabernacles collapses.

I remember sitting with a Black buddy of mine at the FOT in Big Sandy. I think it was the first FOT I attended. I did not know about segregated seating. He sat down with me and fairly promptly an Assistant Deacon showed up, and gave him a hand signal from the aisle that he had to leave. So he re-seated in the Black section. I watched this happen with surprise. I asked an Assistant Deacon about this later and he said "God's Church believes in segregation".

"To me it is no coincidence that your EXACT line up of these peoples coincides with American restriction on emigration in the early 1900. (1920-1930). Your logic on a subconscious level exactly mirrors restrictions implimented at the foundation dates of "fundamentalism", the restrictions on immigrants from CATHOLIC nations and yes people there we have it, the founding of rcg."

Wait!

What?

Wouldn't that include restrictions on the French and Irish? I mean, if this is all about restricting immigrants from Catholic nations, wouldn't include these two?

I dunno... it's a lot of hard work to try to find the laws on the restriction on immigrants in the early 1900s. Perhaps someone would like to provide a link? It seems dubious at best and quite the stretch. Anyway, anyone with the facts should be more than happy to elucidate whatever factual material there might be.

Moreover, it's seems nonsensical and non sequitur to conclude that the Radio Church of God was founded on the basis of the restriction of American immigration. It's really tough to make any sort of rational statements based on "subconscious level".

Furthermore, the fundamentalism of the Armstrongist persuasion began before the 20th Century -- more like the mid 19th.

Lastly, the Radio Church of God was actually founded on the backs of the (conned) farmers of Oregon. It would be interesting to trace lineage of those people to see what ethnic groups they came from. I will grant you that they may not have descended from Italians, but let's face it -- to Herbert Armstrong, it would not make one whit of difference: A narcissistic source is a narcissistic source and money is money, no matter if it did come from obvious Gentile people.

This is all nonsense of course because the majority of Americans were and are Gentile.

All this will have to be moot and the Armstrongists are going to have to come to terms with it because latest predictions are that within 20 to 30 years, whites will be a minority. If all goes according to plan. Of the current administration.

I guess we'll have to wait and see... if we can -- it's a little late for most of us....

For the sake of the discussion it would have been nice if you had included that the Big Sandy incident happened in 1955 or something. Certainly not 1987. If in 1987 it was self imposed segregation. (Akin to "white MTV and black MTV in the early 1990's.)

As I recall official Hoehian doctrine was that "God had sifted the Mannassites" from the nations. Even in Germany there seemed to be the "round" head Saxons (Germans) and the "Long head" Saxons (Israelite Saxons). Very 19th century looking at physical characteristics.

Once you heard a fallacy like that, you start noticing that indeed there are long heads in England and Round heads in Germany. It works like advertising. When I ask you did you see the latest orange Tesla you wouldn't have seen one. But in the next few weeks you would start to notice orange Tela's on the road.

Luckily we have haplogroup experts around nowadays.

You didn't like my proposal that "Gentiles" in 1920 America consisted of "Catholic" immigrants and that Jews were only allowed in some country clubs 15 years ago.

The entire reason why Dr. Martin Luther King became such an internationally acclaimed figure is that he fought for social justice and equality specifically for black people in the USA, but also for other racial groups that were not being treated equally or fairly, and basically lacked the type of representation which would have led to reform. In the absence of that representation, he created his own representation on the street level, and in the town halls. There were enlightened mostly white church groups and college students that recognized the plight of the people who had descended from those who had been forcibly enslaved. They joined in and marched with Dr. King.

Herbert Armstrong and his church did not march with Dr. King for social justice. They actively worked to preserve the status quo, to portray it as being God's way, an eternal value or principle that was being lost as the strangers amongst us rose up to torment us. They taught us to regard the race riots of the era as somehow inexplicable and unjustifiable, either Satan-induced, or the mirroring of the natural savagery of the African people. WCG preached that racial violence would worsen and become more prevalent as the world moved towards the end, and that there could be no solution until Jesus returned, restoring all things, sending everybody back to their homelands. The Flurry group has repackaged and preserved this even today, as one of the original guiding values or precepts of "God's True Church" held prior to the apostasy.

And, if one reads the manpower reports from the archives of Ambassador Reports, one can learn that during the "golden era" of WCG, black people were considered by the administration as being of low mentality, and not suited to leadership.

The problem is that no matter what abominable dung hill is exposed, there will always be someone who feels compelled to rise up and to defend its honor.

To understand Armstrongism, RCG, American Religion it is of major importance to understand the development, history and sociology of the United States.

,how the restrictions on immigration were imposed at what times on what countries and what the prevailing attitudees of the multitude were that spawned fundamentalism, prohibition, and yes BI type of ideology in the 1930's.

That is not a far stretch it is the history of the United States as narrated differently from John Ford and John Wayne. But still the greatest nation on earth.

I completely agree with BB.Except that the thought patterns he desribes (like the manpower papers) were rampant throughout society.

Yes RCG was not revolutionary but static in its Utopian projection.As static as the Southern country and golf clubs only admitting jews and blacks some 10 to 15 years ago. The World Tomorrow as projected was an Utopian Golf Green. Not a suburbian nightmare of chaos which was the reality in the 1960's.

Wow. 1903 to 1924. What are we to make of that. The Wikipedia entries do mention one particular ethnic group: 1917 -- Restricted immigration from Asia by creating an "Asiatic Barred Zone". Besides, the quote was "your EXACT line up of these peoples coincides with American restriction on emigration in the early 1900. (1920-1930)" The United States really doesn't much restrict people from leaving the United States. If you want to go -- leave already. Someone here probably isn't going to get the Nobel Prize for Journalism.

Someone isn't paying much attention: "Furthermore, the fundamentalism of the Armstrongist persuasion began before the 20th Century -- more like the mid 19th." Should have noticed 'Armstrongist persuasion'. That would be from the time of the Great Disappointment and the fundamentalism spawned from Ellen G. White. Thus the non sequitur. It's easy to 'prove' something wrong by comparing it to something else it isn't equal to.

The fact that I am knowledgeable but lazy doesn't make it less true but makes you even lazier than I am. I only cite wikipedia because I am lazy. If really interested I would refer you to all Ivy League institutions. They would be happy to answer your questions.

All quoted rcg derogatory terms of "Gentiles" so far had to do with their "economic status/worth, not their haplogroup.

This is exactly the reasoning of the 1924 act.

Congressman Albert Johnson and Senator David Reed were the two main architects of the act. In the wake of intense lobbying, the Act passed with strong congressional support.[8] There were nine dissenting votes in the Senate[9] and a handful of opponents in the House, the most vigorous of whom was freshman Brooklyn Representative and Jewish-American Emanuel Celler. Over the succeeding four decades, Celler made the repeal of the Act his personal crusade.

Proponents of the Act sought to establish a distinct American identity by favoring native-born Americans over Jews, Southern Europeans[who?], and Eastern Europeans[who?] in order to "maintain the racial preponderance of the basic strain on our people and thereby to stabilize the ethnic composition of the population".[10][11] Reed told the Senate that earlier legislation "disregards entirely those of us who are interested in keeping American stock up to the highest standard – that is, the people who were born here".[12] Southern/Eastern Europeans[who?] and Jews, he believed, arrived sick and starving and therefore less capable of contributing to the American economy, and unable to adapt to American culture.[10]

"I do remember a sermon by Carlton Green where he mentioned being hired to work at food services at AC and the anguish and shame he felt at being told that his black children could not attend Imperial Schools (what an ironic name, now that I think of it)."

And this is a commentary for me, a white student at the time, on how unconscious racism can be. For as much as I knew Carlton Green the chef at Big Sandy, and how well liked he was by the students--how cheery and caring he was for the students, how competently he ran the kitchen--I never knew until now this personal detail regarding Carlton Green which must have been deeply hurtful, of being told that his own children could not attend Imperial Schools, not because of the content of their character, but because of the color of their skin. Not only did I not know of it, I do not recall it ever occurring to me that that might have happened to his family.

From all that I visibly observed as a white student, Carlton Green, African-American, was part of the Ambassador College/church community. There was no sign of dissatisfaction in his outward demeanor. He had a prestigious job--head of the kitchen and its staff--and was widely respected as very competent in that job. I, a white person, would have said if asked, that I observed no racism in the interactions of Carlton Green with students or the AC administration or vice versa. And yet there was this hidden side, this private side: Carlton Green's own children were excluded from equal participation in an education at Imperial Schools, on explicitly racist grounds. And I, and I am sure many other white students, never consciously knew that.

But I bet every single African-American student or church member in the Big Sandy area at the time knew it.

This reminds me of the following email exchange in the early 2000s between me and an African-American fellow student at Big Sandy in the 1970s which shows the same disconnect between white and black experience even when contemporaries in the same circles.

Me: When I looked at the Envoy [AC yearbook] for 1974 a few months back I was surprised to notice 100% white faces in all four classes of Bricket Wood shown, unlike Pasadena and Big Sandy. How come I didn't remember that? Or did I know it and forget it? Did you know that?

Reply: Because you're white. And it really wasn't an issue that affected you. If you saw a Bricket Wood photo of only women, you probably would have questioned what was going on--you being a male, this would directly affect you and your perceptions. I guarantee you, every time a black WCG family or person looks at a photo of AC--paging through the Envoy or some other idyllic portrayal of life at AC, we're thinking, "Where are the black people?"

Me: When you came to Big Sandy, was there a formal mechanism in which you were instructed not to date non-blacks?

Reply: No, but other church literature--Plain Truth and booklets--implied or clearly stated that 'God' placed the races in their boundaries and never intended racial mixing. The Big Guns from Headquarters adamantly preached racial separation, especially folk like Gerald Waterhouse who had the whole racial plan of God figured out. Of course, this doctrine made no sense when they tried to explain Noah and his sons starting the human race and other races ... we were told that God allowed Noah's sons to marry outside of their races, that is, Ham (white) married a black lady; Japheth (white) married an Oriental/yellow lady; and Shem (white), of course, was like Noah--"perfect in his generations," and married a white lady. Yeah, black folks and other minorities heard this kind of preaching for years ... but this was "God's Church." He would set things straight, some felt. Others recognized it as racist and either fumed quietly or left the church.

We've got to go deeper, because in the details it becomes even worse. Carlton Green would most likely have expected that his children would experience racism in the public schools of Texas. However, the private school of an organization which called itself "God's True Church" would most likely have been seen as a solution for, or a sanctuary from that racism. One can certainly see how a potential employee would have imagined this from afar, prior to accepting a position. And, then, the unexpected reality was that those children were excluded from this sanctuary by a group that was in fact more racist than the general public, meaning that these children were then relegated to facing the daily racism, and open hazing that was well known to exist in the southern public schools of the day. But as a member of our shared mental prison, you were required to suck it up and smile, because every word spoken by the ministers of "God's True Church" was to be taken and received exactly as if it had come directly from Jesus Christ!

Plus, it would not have been unusual, if Mr. Green had enthusiastically "sold" the move (like others moving to Big Sandy or Pasadena) to his family by including the carrot that "you'll be attending God's schools, and receiving a much better education than you are getting now!"

So, yeah! Big time, I can imagine the shock, hurt, and dismay a family we called our brethren would have experienced, as the apostle Paul's words were broken and ignored based not on economic status but on skin pigmentation or haplotype. If this isn't a real live practical application of the flawed doctrinal approach of RCG/WCG, I don't know what is. We white folk were not only blinded to this, because proper attitude dictated that our black brothers and sisters not speak up about it, but we were also either knowingly or unknowingly infected by the delusion that white "Israelites" would be highest in God's pecking order for all eternity. While it makes many of us sick, embarrassed, and ashamed, unfortunately some both inside and out of the movement have even embraced and deepened that racism. There are just no words to describe this evil and the hurt it has caused!

Keep on truckin'! We are accomplishing some good! You can Google "Racism in Worldwide Church of God", as probably many readers of Jerald Walker's book will. An abundant collection of our past contributions magically appears. So, enquiring minds will get the true picture in spite of the protestations of Dr. Tabor, Gary Alexander, and assorted usual apologists.

The most ironic thing? In the middle of all the condemning documentation, one of those Dave Pack "Looking for the original WCG?" ads suddenly appears. Couldn't think of a better place for that to happen. Chain of custody of the ideology, you know!

For those who deny that WCG was racist, I offer this instructive parallel true story. The Mormons (the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or LDS) until 1978 believed that blacks could not be members of the elite "Melchizedek priesthood" which had the highest status in the Kingdom, and also held elite privileges and power in the church on earth in the present age. Not coincidentally, the Mormons, whose growth is based on volunteer missionary work of its young men, had difficulties making headway in Africa, where for some odd reason the doctrine that there could be no blacks in the celestial priesthood and in the foretaste of the coming Kingdom on earth in the present age which was the church ... was considered alienating.

As I understand it most rank-and-file Mormons both then or now do not think of either themselves or their church as racist. Parallel with the old WCG, I am sure that most Mormon parents at the time taught their children to never say the n-word, taught their children that God loves all peoples and races whoever they are, etc. However, in the aftermath of the 1960s and the Civil Rights Movement in America, the Mormons' no-blacks rule for the elite priesthood (not for lower-caste membership) became increasingly criticized.

In 1978 the leading Apostle (President of the Twelve) of the LDS church worldwide, Spencer Kimball, reported that Jesus Christ had personally appeared to him in a vision and instructed that that doctrine be abolished. The doctrine was ended, and missionary work in Africa picked up steam. The historic embarrassment remained, but no longer were blacks excluded from the celestial priesthood for all eternity, to the happiness of all concerned.

This is well-known history, but my point of interest is the self-understanding of Mormons concerning this doctrine. In 1987 I spent several months in New Zealand and came to know well through a folk music group a Maori nurse who was devout LDS (Mormon). She was educated and professional. Through her I became acquainted with a circle of her friends, also LDS and also, like her, professional and articulate, decent people, able to discuss any manner of topics intelligently, while being fully believing LDS. At an appropriate stage when I felt it would not cause offense, I gently asked about the LDS history of exclusion of blacks from the priesthood, and how she felt about that history.

Here was her answer, told to me with complete sincerity, which seemed essentially channeled from LDS leaders. She explained that that doctrine had been a great source of grief for a long time in the church and to its leaders. The church leaders (she explained to me) did not like that doctrine--none of them did. But it was commanded in their scripture. For decades they prayed and PLEADED with Jesus Christ to change that doctrine. But Christ did not change it quite yet, so what could they do? But finally Christ DID answer their earnest entreaties, and changed that doctrine by means of His vision to the apostle in 1978. The leaders' heartfelt prayers for all those years and decades had been answered. The church rejoiced that Jesus Christ had indeed answered the leaders' prayer for racial equality in Christ's priesthood.

I confess I had not seen that coming--that line of explanation.

In the old WCG and its current successor groups of course there is not usually a notion that Jesus Christ occasionally appears in person in vision to the Apostle to get the occasional scriptural doctrine updated that needs updating. Following which the earthly apostles and leaders can then explain that they personally had wanted the doctrine changed for decades and had prayed for it to be changed, until Christ at last and graciously answered their prayers and changed it.

Ah, Greg, there is much about the human psyche that is multi-faceted and mysterious. Getting along with others is a learned skill, and it does involve considerable compromise, empathy, and understanding. And it is so easy, when attempting to get along with people of different backgrounds to read prejudices into the equation. That becomes even more treacherous when one's formative years were spent in a group which revels in the assigning of and differentiating amongst alleged strengths and weaknesses based on ethnicity. I encountered learned people in Pasadena who claimed to make a study of these, and their opinions were much valued. I knew people who were familiar with the strengths supposedly inherent in their genes, and actually cultivated and nurtured these strengths, even when they totally lacked them. You might say that it was the WCG version of the astrological sign, and equally bogus at that. Reality was it was blatant stereotyping, and with overwhelming exceptions to boot. It is an artificial limitation we learn to assign to others, and are better off forgetting altogether.

Why don't the Armstrongists simply make a statement on what they believe about race? Most of what we know is historical - about the old WCG. What about the modern proponents of the now defunct WCG? Why don't Don Ward or Mark Armstrong simply make a detailed statement on what the their churches now believe about race - both the theology and the practice? My guess is that they are caught between a rock and a hard place. If they speak with moderation in order to stay out of the media spotlight, they may alienate their respective bases. After the distillation of the Armstrongist movement over the last decades, many of the really hardcore remain and want to continue to hear that God is a racist like they are.

Have the Armstrongists really renounced any of their racism? I recall Ron Dart renounced the idea that Native Americans should be exterminated from the stage in the Field House in Big Sandy. To my knowledge he is the only person who has ever renounced it. My guess is that he was just independently speaking his mind.

How was it that HWA was able to present himself as a great leader to heads of government when he was a unadorned racist? Was there no media? I think those leaders knew what he was but smelled money.

Herbie was able to present himself as a great leader for two reasons, Near Earth. 1) Our world in which he functioned as a racist and taught racism was separated from the world of diplomacy and international geopolitics by many degrees. It's not as if one of our African American brethren would have a chance encounter with King Hussein while shopping at Safeway. So while our world didn't spill into his photo ops with the often troubled and precariously seated world leaders, HWA deliberately spilled his ambassador without portfolio activities into our consciousness to impress and control us. 2). Many of the world leaders with whom he met were racists or chauvinists themselves. It wasn't a long time ago that leaders in Japan would regularly get themselves in trouble for stating that our minorities here in the USA weakened us and degraded our culture. Who remembers a time when leaders in Israel accepted Arabs as being their equal? I can actually imagine these guys and Herbie exchanging racist jokes secretly amongst themselves as they let their hair down over a couple glasses of Dom.

Let me strike a pragmatic note. I recognize that the Black community in North America is a community under stress and this community has been under stress for hundreds of years. This stress has produced sociological problems. Crime rates in the Black community are high. Many Blacks are prejudiced against Whites. Some Black schools are very dangerous places to be. There are parts of Memphis that I will not enter. If a Black family moved in next door to me, I would have apprehensions. Black governments in Africa are some of the worst.

But this does not lead me to conclude that Blacks are lesser in the sight of God. And I do not believe God created Blacks to be servants to pretend "Israelites." All peoples have had their low points. The Jews found the Celtic people, when they were located in the area around the Black sea to be disgusting animals. This is because they had no marriage institution. Sex was promiscuous and children were taken care of by the entire tribe rather than a set of parents. This was anathema to the Jews. And the English still think the Irish are disgusting animals even though there is no genetic difference between them. The English views ends up being a self-indictment.

I was sitting in Faculty Dining in Big Sandy after an assembly in which representatives of a local Black College gave a presentation. I felt the presentation was in poor taste. Some funky music was played with questionable lyrics. Afterward,David Robinson walked into Faculty Dining and said "I'm unhappy with Bob Lee (General Robert E. Lee of the Confederacy). He didn't work hard enough."

This was an statement that endorsed the Confederate cause - a wish for the continuation of slavery. There were high ranking AC administrator/ministers in the room. But I witnessed no negative reaction to what Robinson said. I can only guess there was tacit approval. And at this time AC was trying to normalize relationships with local colleges and universities - a bold move to come out of hiding.

The point is that one can recognize that the assembly was in poor taste without going to the extreme of advocating slavery. Racists live in this extreme zone. Armstrongists live in this extreme zone. And Armstrongists have hardened the point by developing a "God ordained" theology to support their view.

As a sidebar, it would be interesting to know what a reformer like David Havir believes about the issue of race in the doctrinal Armstrongite context. My guess is that he is without self-examination on this topic and therefore traditional by default. As long as the issue is not examined, it remains what it was in the days of HWA and Herr Doktor Hoeh.

I also expect that Don Ward has a much examined and hardened position on race but I wonder how many people who sit in his congregations actually know what he believes? And is it what the UCG would officially support in front of the news media?

"Racists live in this extreme zone. Armstrongists live in this extreme zone."

Near_Earth_Object, that certainly covers it all concerning the race question.

The question is, though, even if this and only this issue were resolved (which it never will be), what mitigation is there for all the other 'extreme zones'?

Armstrongism is all about extremism and it never ends. It isn't just about race. Everyone can be white and there is still issues about the status within different levels of the hierarchy, with rank having the great privileges. The I-W program is a sterling example of the utter failure of Armstrongism to even measure up to its own standards, creating an uncrossable rift of division between those who are deemed to be anathema to those 'in good standing' because of impossible contradictory requirements of those holding the power and prestige. It's quite the extremist thing to not serve in the military when those 'of reputation' hold it offensive and unpatriotic at a time when the official outward version is that we 'are not of this world' and not to engage in politics. Politics abounded in the ministry and administration.

For that reason alone, Armstrongism should not exist and should never have existed, The Worldwide Church of God should not have existed, Ambassador College should not have existed, Herbert Armstrong should never have been considered any sort of minister and The Journal is useless because it is little more than a tool to promote worthless Armstrongism.

Without Armstrong, there would be a measure of increased peace in the world with an accompanying reduction in abuse.

At one point in the 1980s I saw American evangelist Jerry Falwell on television concerning the subject of South Africa and apartheid. This was back when South Africa was still white-minority ruled and practicing apartheid. Conservative Christian leaders such as Falwell were among the strongest supporters of the racist regime which was under heavy criticism both worldwide and inside the United States for the apartheid system. As noted above by Kathleen, the Plain Truth magazine joined in this larger conservative Christian context of support for the South Africa regime at the time. I remember those articles.

Usually the Plain Truth supported divine entitlement of whites to the best natural resources and strategic spots on earth today on the grounds that God long ago had given title to this modern real estate to white “Israelites” today. Therefore--on those grounds--nearly every issue of the old Plain Truth would argue in at least one article that use of British and American military power to keep and hold Gibralter, the Panama Canal, etc. and etc. and etc. was not simply a cost-benefit analysis modern strategic decision, or an issue of respect of the wishes of the people living there, but was legitimized today because of divine entitlement. But according to WCG logic the ruling white South African Afrikaaners were Assyrians, not even Israelites. But, they were white. Apparently, that was close enough to qualify for favored treatment in the Plain Truth magazine, “a magazine of understanding”.

Falwell was asked by the newscaster about his and fellow evangelical conservatives’ support for South Africa. Falwell replied that the problem in South Africa was that apartheid existed, but no one liked apartheid. According to Falwell, the blacks did not like apartheid, and the whites did not either. It was something that was inherited but no one today supported or wanted, but it still existed. Therefore, the white government of South Africa should not be condemned, since they were against apartheid too. There was this unjust system in place, enforced brutally by laws and police, but no one was responsible since everyone was against it. So Falwell's logic.

Compare that to this excerpt from a letter of Ronald Dart to me of Nov. 24, 1987:

"There were many of us who were uncomfortable with the college's policy [on race relations], but not even Herbert W. Armstrong could change that policy by fiat--as amazing as that sounds. Racial feelings were too deeply rooted in everyone concerned ..."

The no-unmarried-blacks admissions policies to Ambassador College, however, were ended by fiat for two out of three of the Ambassador campuses, Pasadena and Big Sandy, in the fall 1971. That came about in the WCG from a higher power than Herbert Armstrong, namely the IRS which threatened to end WCG/AC tax exemption as a charitable organization if WCG continued policies in violation of federal civil rights laws. Forced to choose between submission to godless laws of man and the financial consequences of loss of their tax exemption if they remained true to racist principles, the WCG chose submission to the godless laws of man. Without explaining to church members why, starting in the fall of 1971 the WCG began admitting single black students to AC Pasadena and AC Big Sandy.

The AC campus at Bricket Wood in England, however, safely beyond the the reach of US law and the IRS, continued the traditional practice of no black students as a foretaste of the true values of the World Tomorrow until that campus closed down in 1974.

Perhaps Dart did not mean to literally deny that HWA could have formally ended racist practices in the church by fiat (if he had chosen to do so), but rather meant some sense that if HWA had done so it would have been unenforceable, or if enforced it would cause large-scale defections of ministers and members leaving.

If so Dart could have been right. For that is what happened when Tkach Sr. and Tkach Jr., HWA's successors, did just that.

Your last posting is somewhat rusty. I will be easy on you since you are someone to be respected.

According to WCG logic white South Africa would have been a mix of Ephraim, Zebulon, Benjamin and Ruben and perhaps even more.

In your posting you COMPLETELY leave out the Cold War context of the time.White oppressive rule was condoned by ALL western governments even Ronald Reagan while in public they would speak out against it.

This was condoned not because they were white and the other was black. NO. The ANC was communist and to have the nuclear power south africa (nuclear because of israeli aid) with all its rare metals fall into the hand of the Soviet Union would be unacceptable to ALL true cold war wariors.

Do you really believe that it is a coincidence that president De Klerk ONLY was ordered by Ronald Reagan to regime change after the Fall of the Soviet empire?

Nelson Mandela could have been free 25 years before the actual event. But (perhaps rightly so) never wanted to give up armed fight against the regime through the communist ANC. This was the reason he was in prison. Not because he was a person of black skin.

WCG was in my opinion a tool of soft power diplomacy of the State Department. There are plenty of GII logs where the GII flies directly from Washingto to Jo burg to Jerusalem, to Japan and back to the 9th economic power of the world at the time (the State of California)

Apartheid was not "inherited". It was a social construct to keep a large, uneducated, mass of potential communists under the patronage of rulers. And for the record it was a very bad system, but it served its purpose during the Cold War against the Soviet Union.

BI and Armstrongism provided ideological backing for this system.

I am not sure if Phil Gray (former black minister in England) studied at Bricket Wood. But I do share your assessment that with the internationalisation of RCG into England and beyond that it lost its typical American "classless, democratic/egalitarian (in the sense that ordinary students could directly talk to hwa and he would make time) and turned into a class system of "ministers" and "members".

Thank you very much for being the first person ever (besides me) to make the point that the PT provided ideological rational and backing for the power of the Anglo Saxon military economic complex over the world (as opposed to Godless Communism)

This was before the internet and millions of ordinary "voters" were reading this magazine full of ideological backing in support of the Cold War wariors.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union there was no rational to keep the beast inflated. Hell, even let a Russian rule the entire structure until collapse. The cold war was dead, hwa was dead,, the structure was to disappear. What remained were some bewildered tithe payers splintering into oblivion.

Read up on what every Kiwani, Lions or Rotary member understands when he hears someone talking about "the unseen hand." It is a very clear and direct message to all with an education and a position of leadership.

For the military complex read up on "Echelon". Every posting on this website, mail, telephone call in the world is to this day "listened" at in stations connected as a web encompassing New Zealand, (Ephraim), Wales, US (Manassah), Zebulon, Issachar, according to the ideological "translation" of the defunct wcg.

During WWII, the Nazi leaders condemned nuclear physics as Jewish physics. They claimed that the Aryan mind could not understand nuclear physics. In the Seventies I was talking to a Big Sandy employee who had studied in Pasadena about the presence of Blacks on campus. I did not realize that this was such a big thing. He told me that in Pasadena the belief had been that Gentiles could not profit from an AC education - they did not have the minds for it. Only Israelites had the mental equipment to be educable at God's College. Bigots condemn the very neurology of those they don't like.

Prejudice against Blacks is not confined to Armstrongists. It is quite common throughout the Southern Baptist Church and for similar reasons. Southerners developed the idea that Blacks are descended from Canaan and hence should be legitimately and righteously enslaved.

I spoke with the daughter of a leading South African minister back in the Seventies. She was a student at AC. She told me that Americans condemn apartheid in SA but if they understood Blacks they would understand the necessity of it. She said Blacks were like children and had to be managed. My guess is that Blacks lagged because deprivation was the policy of the SA government at that time. Expectations are forced to be fulfilled.

Armstrongists may tell you that racial discrimination was never a WCG policy, like Herman Hoeh maintained. My guess is that if you wanted to find a smoking gun about racism in the WCG in archived records the effort would be fruitless. But the fact is that the average, committed lay member of the WCG was racists and the leadership knew it and did nothing about it. They let it fester and made sure it did not get into print as a policy.

A minister named Plache allegedly issued the following guidelines about racial intermarriage. A Pasadena graduate show me his notes on this.

If you are one quarter Japhetic or more, you cannot marry into the White race.If you are one eighth Hamitic ore more, you cannot marry into the White race.

Notice that the guidelines are White-centric - intended to protect the purity of the White race. Notice also that to implement these guidelines you have to pull out Hoeh's classic on the "Races of Mankind" or the Compendium to figure out who is Japhethic and who is Hamitic. Unfortunately, Hoeh had it all wrong. He classed the Spanish as Japhetic and the Spanish are closely related to the Brits - both are R1b. The purest R1b populations are to be found among the Basque, Portuguese and Welsh. That list of errors could go one.

nck, if you are suggesting the WCG was an intelligence operation in the service of US State Dept. propaganda influence, etc., there are issues of evidence and plausibility. On evidence, unless you have something, there does not seem to be any presently known. Evidence would be documents, financial records, a confession, or a whistleblower. Do you know of anything of this nature? I do not.

Nor do I see it as plausible with HWA/WCG of the 1930s-1960s. No unexplained or unseen sources of money in those decades have been brought to light. HWA's financial success is entirely explicable in terms of successful salesmanship with the coworker letters generating tithes and donations. If it was an intelligence operation HWA would be reporting to or controlled by someone, but in his early decades there is no sign of that.

On South Africa, you are right that I erred in saying that Afrikaaners were Assyrians only in WCG terms; I was thinking of the German part of Afrikaaner Dutch-German heritage whereas WCG did regard Dutch as from Zebulon or Israelite.

One does not need to suppose an intelligence operation to explain the Plain Truth/WCG being conservative/Cold War politically, with the British-Israel twist to it. Most of grassroots America bought into Cold War rhetoric. I see nothing in the figures writing the "news analyses" of the PT such as Hoeh, Gene Hogberg and crew, etc. or HWA himself to suggest they were other than true believers, honest lunatics so to speak.

I am aware that the CIA and lettered agencies have a history of making use of "media assets" as in Operation Mockingbird brought out by the Church committee. The CIA has made use of religious organizations' missionary work and has infiltrated legitimate charitable organizations, for purposes of getting access to intelligence and as cover for covert operatives, in foreign countries. In the case of at least one religious organization, the Moonies, there is heavy Korean and US intelligence agency background and involvement such that that might be the strongest case for an actual religious movement as an intelligence operation.

But there seems to be no evidence of this in HWA/WCG's early decades or formative decades of Ambassador College. When one gets into the later stages, into the 1970s and 1980s with the travels and money and foundations moving around internationally, the Japanese fascist circles contacts and the Japanese royal family, etc., perhaps other diplomatic contacts, things could get more murky. But still, even there one needs evidence; one cannot draw conclusions on the basis of suspicion alone.

There are three good reasons not to run far on suspicion alone: (a) the statistical likelihood that most guesses in the absence of evidence turn out to be wrong as to specifics; (b) damage to innocent people tarred on the basis of suspicion who are actually innocent; and (c) consumption of personal energies in deadend directions when so much exists of real issues which are based on known facts.

I think the racism in HWA and WCG was partly a product of the times but it went beyond that into ideas of American and British entitlement to world empire justified in terms of the British-Israel belief. This was no intelligence operation in its origins and success. HWA's success was basic grassroots flourishing of crazy and harmful ideas, of which American history has a long and rich history. My take on it anyway.

For the sake of your a/b/c points and indeed my and your and everybodies personal energies I will not for now repeat the points I made over the years on other blogs.

It might indeed damage the good name of Stanley Rader when I repeat the instance when his person being surrounded by the generals of the entire Philipine army at their headquarters pledged to support Marcos' agricultural and social reform program with wcg funds, while a member wrote a supportive book about the program. The only "proof" I have indeed is the meager 25.000 dollars gift per year over a 10 year period. How does that relate to the 80 million cia budget in the Philipines to support the Marcos regime? Not at all I guess. So you might have a point there.

And I am way out of my league speculating about other connections like the Pasadena Marcos mistress and Marcos New York real estate holdings.People reading these last two sentences might even be totally put off while initially they may have found my first point on the support of social reform programs "interesting."

When hwa flies from the foreign minister of South Africa to the prime minister of Jerusalem they were most likely just talking about educational exchange and perhaps even exchanging personal greetings. Of course the channels through which Israel supported the building of nuclear weapons for South Africa had nothing to do with the GII flight schedule. Unless one starts reading Joseph Nye about "soft power" and the 2 suddenly are not mutually exclusive. Why does everyone start talking about the CIA when I explicitly talk about State Departement policy anyway?

2)Of course it was only after his severing of contact that Robert Kuhn made a profession out of the exchange of "high technology" between Israel and Japan. On the other hand. This type of exchange only takes place between very good friends. And as the Japanese state department of oil dependent Japan was dismayed by Israel's occupation of East Jerusalem. It did not stop wcg from cultural exchange between Israel and Japan through prince Mikasa. Later of course hwa was highly awarded "for doing his part on the Okinawa sovereignty issue." (like the sponsoring of the Japanese - American talks.)

Most people speak of "hobnobbing" with the gII. In the past I cited very specific locations for the japanese elites to fly to like quatar, south america etc. All assisting Japan to find its place again after a history of shame as prime partner and market for the USA.

As I said I limited myself today to a 1 second search on the internet and found a very basic thesis.Perhaps page 5 is a fast way of explaining my point.Of course much more is documented on the Carter administration religious and moral foreign policy."http://www.eisa-net.org/be-bruga/eisa/files/events/turin/haynes-haynes_stair_paper_13_august_2007.pdf

Like you I feel wcg's racism is rooted in the causes you so honestly describe. I might just add the dimension that wcg was a "fundamentalist" church. Hearking back to Old Testament philosophy. And as even Jews recognize. Jewish religion old testament religion is racist in its very essence. Although it is possible for a gentile to become a jew nowadays (re ivanka) It still is a racist religion by nature. So when one emphasizes the old testament package the racism is included.

Perhaps that is one of the reasons why Japanese intelligence was so interested in the sixties in that peculiar people that had suffered so much after wwII. Of course the Japanese were "victims" too of two horrible bombs. They shared a history of isolation a special relation to their god and racial purity and superiority. While at the same time being highly resourcefull and successfull in technological development.

We see traces of this until this very day. In Japan with a greying population it has become impossible for them to grow economically. Reluctantly they are now forced by their shrinking economy to allow immigrants "of the confucian persuasion" (korea, taiwan). No other immigrants are to be welcomed. Of course again we see a religious mellow explanation for something a modern eye recognizes as blatant racism.

I am not favoring one or the other or deciding on Japanese policies. I am just observing. (interesting note (3 years ago the minister of education and technology in Japan was an ac graduate) but the current prime minister is shifting positions like a meatgrinder.

hanks again and perhaps in future exchange I will include more sources instead of conclusions. I have earlier sollicited for people to respond in an honest way, but actually you are the first to actually acknowledge and recognize what is to the point and what is speculation. I am not used to people on the blogs responding in that way and will have to ammend my aproach whenever I see the "call sign" GregD in the future.

Racism within the WCG was not just a reflection of the larger American view, as Hoeh has maintained. Nor was it just a product of British-Israelism. It was at the very core of WCG "theology." If you assemble together bits and pieces scattered throughout booklets, articles and sermons, there is a Doctrine of God within the WCG.

And in this doctrine you discover that Jesus looked like Adam physically. (Note that Armstrongism interprets the "Image of God" to be a physical appearance unlike Christian theology. Armstrongism asserts that spirit behaves like a substance and God consisst of this substance. Its a long story.) Christ was the second Adam. Adam was created in the image of God so he looked like God the Father physically. Shem was stated to be in Genesis to be in the appearance of Adam. Shem was purportedly the progenitor of the White Race. Hence, God is a Caucasian. And this is what he originally intended human kind to be - Caucasians. Non-Whites were mutants. I am not sure who they thought perpetrated the mutation but I could guess. I know Armstrongites thought Cain was Black as was Nimrod. And the Canaanites. All the "bad guys" are Black in the Armstrongist Biblical interpretation.

Back in the Sixties, Dean Blackwell, the apologist for WCG racism, began to preach that the non-White peoples were not mutants as believed earlier. He stated that God intended these other races to exist without abandoning the Image of God based argument cited in the previous paragraph. So Israelites look like God. They are of the God kind. Blacks and Browns do not look like God.

Tabor says that the idea that only Whites were to be in the Kingdom of God is a bogus idea. This is not entirely true. It is better stated that only Whites of Israelitish extraction would be first class citizens of the Kingdom of God. The ingrafted Gentiles will get only honorable mention.

Pretty heady stuff for a bunch of Scots-Irish Southerners who formed the lowest class in Britain and form one of the lowest classes in America.

The science of genetics tells a different story. The original genetic Adam was Black. He was haplogroup A. They are different from the general Black population but if you saw one you would conclude you were looking at a gracile SubSaharan Black. A small number of these special archaic Black people still exist in south central Africa. (There is also an enclave of people in Britain who are haplogroup A.) Caucasians are a mutation from the original Black stock not the other way around.

Back when the Pasadena Public Schools were under supervised plan to integrate, on nights of the meetings that were ongoing with the community, the KKK and other hate groups would leave very crude and inflammatory flyers on the windshields of cars parked for the meetings. These flyers had nothing to do with the WCG, and unlike WCG they employed racial epithets in making their points.

One idea advanced was that white people were created, while the darker races were the ones who had evolved. As "proof", one of the flyers had pictures, allegedly depicting the stillborn offspring of black women who were impregnated by apes in experiments supposedly conducted in Mexico.

There were crude dissertations about criminal activities supposedly perpetrated by the more deeply pigmented races, and pseudo research relating IQ to race. These flyers were a horrible assault to the senses of all humane or civilized people, and were intended to foment hatred.

Now, you can't honestly say that HWA/WCG promoted this sort of lower class hatred. However, by introducing lower key similar concepts, and expressing them in a more socially acceptable manner, Armstrongism managed to sell racism to a slightly more sophisticated class, and to sell it in a way that made it all sound reasonable, as if somehow racism originated in the mind of the Creator. That, imo, though less overt, is equally as damaging as anything done by the various hate groups. This also added a dimension of deniability, the ability for people to conveniently pretend that they did not know.

I have encountered the idea that Blacks are animals before. In a very old religious work, I encountered the idea that Blacks are descended from humanoid animals that were on earth before Adam was created. I think the book was dated around 1910 and published in the South.

But I also heard a similar idea stated by a member of Rod Meredith's group. The statement in this case was that Blacks are descended from pre-Adamic men.

Yet Paul seemed to believe that all races of men are of one blood. My guess is that the religious racists would have a facile explanation for this. Something along the lines that Blacks are not "men" so this scripture does not apply to them. But then they must explain why God made Blacks a part of the breeding population with Whites.

Without going into a bunch of bogus eschatology, I believe the distinction you draw between the millenium (I refuse to use the expression "The World Tomorrow". That is a sales pitch for Armstrongism.) and the Kingdom of God is there in the millenium there will yet be physical humans needing to be taught and in the KOG everyone will be a resurrected spirit. I disagree with this as does the Christian movement but I recognize it as standard Armstrongism.

Will "Israelites" form the upper class in both the millenium and the KOG is a better phrasing of the hypothesis. Someone might observe that there is no way for us to know such things. But HWA knew where he was going to be in the KOG hierarchy. I believe he mentions this role in that little thin book published by Everest House about the World Tomorrow. HWA, of course,rewarded himself generously and clarified to the lay membership that they were just not in his league.

While I have my views on what Armstrongists believe about the station of racial "Israelites" in the future epochs based on evidences I know of, this is a good question for Havir, Mark Armstrong and Don Ward. No doubt you would get a range of answers. What would Ward say if you could get him to have the candor he had in the Ambassador Big Sandy Faculty Locker Room after a few beers and in the confident afterglow of a rousing football game? My guess is that you would be appalled.

You might wish to delete your 4:52 comment. I see people visiting this blog from the four corners of the world. So it might not be so buried.

To me I still see a lot of quoting of members and ministers that are not so educated on the subject. To me those statements hold as much authority as the people I meet at the anual meetings of stock holders. Non whatsoever. Opinions are opinions.

Thank you for rephrasing the hypothesis:Will "Israelites" form the upper class in both the millenium and the KOG is a better phrasing of the hypothesis.

Armstrongist should recognize that the "command structure in the KOG" is all speculations. They could focus more on the sexless, raceless, adopted godkind, administrating it all.

As a gesture to you. If you and I make it somehow we can rest assured that our assignment to the outer rim of the galaxy will be one of fruitful cooperation and conversation and we will have jazz. They might even forget about Tatooine since the trip will cost more than is to be collected.

Unless you tell them what they want to hear, everything you say and write will automatically be discarded and you will be regarded as a total non entity unworthy of any sort of acknowledgement no matter how factual, how much proof you have or how scientifically confirmed it is.

HWA claimed Adam, Noah, Israelites, et al were white. He never gave a scriptural reason or cited any other evidence for that. No matter how often he dogmatically stated it in sermons or in print his justification for the statement was always the same: HWA would say it was, quote unquote "obvious".

No one native to the Middle East today is white. Jews worldwide who are not recent immigrants to the lands in which they live reflect the skin color of where they are, whether white in Poland and USA, or dark-skinned or black in Yemen, and every shade of color in between. This is due to the effect of intermarriages and conversions over the centuries in the various lands. Ashkenazi Jews of eastern Europe although descended from the Middle East on the male side of DNA, have been reported according to separate DNA analysis from the female side to be descended from Europeans on the female line, suggesting early intermarriage, such as of ancient Jewish men with European women. (This DNA data on the female side is also reported to have debunked the Khazar conversion theory.)

But back to HWA, who believed and taught that everybody who matters in the Bible and who will be at the top in the divine pecking order in the future kingdom of God were white. Again, in fifty or sixty years of WCG print publications, although HWA repeatedly stated that the leading Old Testament luminaries, patriarchs, Jesus, etc. were white, not once in literature offered to the public have I ever been able to find any scriptural evidence cited for that bizarre claim. It was just something repeated and repeated and repeated for decades to church members, most of whom accepted it, on the basis of literally zero cited scriptural justification.

The ancient Romans and other pagan authors wrote about Jews. They said a lot of things about Jewish behavior and customs and ways, but they never characterized the Jews as looking different from other Middle Easterners in appearance. Therefore, Jews of the time of Christ looked no different than other Middle Easterners at the time, and Middle Easterners of the time looked pretty much like Palestinians and Arabs native to the Middle East look today. This would be what we think of more as brown-skinned than "white". In fact some Jews of the time of Jesus, including for all we know relatives of Jesus, may have descendants among today's Palestinians tracing back to conversions to Islam at the time of the Islamic conquest. Nor do the Gospels suggest Jesus or his family members or original disciples were different in skin color than contemporary Jews of the time.

So the notion of a white Adam, Noah, Israelites, Jesus etc. in the middle of the Middle East among a sea of otherwise brown-skinned tribes and people is just completely pulled out of the fevered world of HWA's imagination. The reason HWA never cited a scripture saying all these patriarchs were white is because none exists. To those who believe these ancient patriarchs were white, no reason was ever given in WCG publications offered to the public other than it was "obvious"--even though what is actually obvious to anyone who looks at the facts of anthropology is that that is nonsense.

But for those who want to go to the Bible itself, here is the biblical representation of the skin color of the patriarchs:

Part of the problem is that HWA believed that God had a body. And when man was made in the image of God that was a reference to man having a body like God's. And if God has a body, what are his body's racial characteristics? How likely is it that HWA would decide that God is not Caucasian in appearance?

The drive to believe that God is White is so strong among European derived people, the Jewishness of Jesus is submerged. Most people in America believe that Christ looks like an Englishman who has long reddish-brown hair, sometimes blue eyes, very white skin and wears a white bathrobe and sandals. His features are usually very fine, even feminine.

But how does the West deal with the fact that this appearance does not correspond to what a Jew looks like. Palestinean Jews, according to anthropologists, at the time of Christ were olive-skinned, had frizzy or curly hair, brown eyes and aquiline features. They were on average around 5'1" tall and weighed 110 pounds. Why would Christ not look like the average Jew of his time. And the OT tells us that he was not handsome - he didn't look like GTA. Following HWA's logic, this is also what God the Father would look like (because Christ is his express image), not a Caucasian but a Middle Easterner.

So the Klan claims that Christ was a Caucasian and the Jews are imposters. The American Nazi Party claims that Christ was a Caucasian and the Jews are imposters. And this same idea emerged on the AC Big Sandy campus in the Seventies. The "bible" for this view was Arthur Koestler's book entitled "The Thirteenth Tribe." Koestler, himself a Jew, argued fatuously that the book could not be anti-Semitic because the so-called Jews (Ashkenazi) are not Semites - they are Khazars who converted to Judaism.

A minister who held this view on the BS campus told me that he believed that the "real" Tribe of Judah was somewhere on the North American continent - hence, indistinguishable from other British derived people. Another argument he used was that the Jews were not prophesied to reclaim the promised land until the return of Christ. Who then were the people now in Palestine who claimed to be Jews? I found this same argument in a Neo-Nazi magazine at a large university research library.

Then the science of genetics enters the picture and this all becomes solemn nonsense. I won't go into it.

Pam Dewey shows the depth and breadth of the racism of Herbert Armstrong on her website.

Some speculated how he became so racist, but the answer lies in his early career experience at the Wiggins Mill recounted in The Autobiography of Herbert W. Armstrong: Chapter 2 -- "Learning important lessons". He recounted that he "had never seen southern Negros before" at this juncture in 1912. As you read through his experience, you should be able to see how he came to the conclusions he had. Moreover, it didn't help that he became deathly ill at the end of this experience and that helped set his negative ideas.

Herbert Armstrong was entirely a self-made man, tempered by his experiences. His experiences with American corporate executives were included. He was sometimes in contact with the top executives as he took their advertising campaigns forward. This should not be confused with having corporate executive ability, nor should it be construed that the Corporate CEOs and Officers at all considered him an equal. He was not. He was just a tool to help them sell product. This may also have led to his desperately wanted to be accepted as an equal with "important men" later in life.

Most people here are familiar with the principle of parsimony, usually cast in Occam's Razor: "The simplest explanation is usually the most likely". Wild speculations that Herbert Armstrong's views were a result of the Cold War decades after he had already formed them is utter rubbish and rather stupid. Attempting to toss off wild speculation unsupported by any sort of objective facts is lunacy. As noted above, Dr. Greg Doudna, author of "Showdown at Big Sandy: Youthful Creativity Confronts Bureaucratic Inertia at an Unconventional Bible College in East Texas" has already addressed this unfortunate diversion from sanity (albeit rendered in 'Academic Speak').

Any attempts to present irrelevant URL links or specify that we should go look for evidence of things that are not at all real (as well as irrelevant) at Ivy League Schools is a preposterous waste of time because no one is ever going to find what doesn't exist.

And when that isn't particularly a successful strategy, name calling, slander and libel don't particularly add anything to the discussion.

Those of familiar with such tactics generally conclude that is a result of insufficient connections across the corpus callosum.

If you are referring to me. And it certainly looks like it.1) You are completely distorting what I said. You do it all the time and your analysis of what I say is laughable.For instance I never said hwa's views were shaped and formed during the cold war.I said his philosophy was extremely useful in the execution of political goals.

2) I studied all relevant materials of Harvard and Georgetown University. I have the most legitimate degree in academics of anyone on the blogs. (Except perhaps Mr Doudna)I choose to express myself as a moron. But I would gladly provide sources for anything I ever said.

The fact that no one ever asked me a basic question on what I stated or asked for sources speaks volumes as to the level analysis conducted by the anti crowd.

By the way I am anti aswell. But I refuse to follow the line of reasoning that I am very well capable of but would destroy any hope or sense of religion for those who chose to believe. The way of Alan Dexter is logical but depressing to me.

Over the years you have academically speaking been completely dishonest in your analysis of our past experience. Statistically you have been wrong on 99 percent of everything you ever said. Your inability to ask questions speaks volumes.

Ponder that. And as you can see. I am not naming names. I am just being brutally honest in what I have observed the past years.

Your link to the autobiography serves what point??Everyone knows black people were not able to serve in the United States Army in World War II, which was 1945.So what purpose does it serve to quote experiences from 1911 that do not seem to differ from the general view of the entire populace or at leaste 50 percent and one?

To me it seems the proposal of your sources is irrelevant.I choose to only provide relevant sources if asked by anyone interested. So far none, so it seems I have been a wise steward in managing the economy of my time.

Statistically you have been wrong on 99 percent of everything you ever said.

Well and yes, I couldn't be happier: Even though nck is obviously a proficient liar and games player (as he announced to us in a previous post), I would not want to impeach him as a witness, even though he takes delight in being a bully to those who are not in a position to defend themselves, he has just confirmed the fact that I am 100% right three and one-half days a year.

And yes, I did get a 3.34 G.P.A. at the University and minored in Math.

Who is not in a position to defend themselves, hwa?? In my world clarifications come through asking questions. You pose psychological profiles like the mad professor. It must be "obvious" to the odd interested person that you hardly to never ask questions. Your prose speaks volumes. But I am patient.

Many of the people who come here to Gavin's blog are above average intelligence and some are quite advanced to brilliant.

It seems that most of those have no issue understanding the link to Herbert Armstrong's autobiography; it is only the severely deficient who have difficulty.

And in spite of my corporate experience as a manager for a major Fortune 50 company, learning information mapping by Dr. Robert E. Horn and communicating in managing many successful project including one for $750,000, and while most people of moderate intelligence including some of moron level I.Q. have comprehension of the many documents I have written including technical manuals and books, there are some of those who simply don't have the level of comprehension available to the general population.

For them it is like attempting to explain rainbows to earthworms.

To ask questions of such a person would not yield a viable answer and thus would be a complete waste of time since they do not seem to understand what normal, yeah, below normal people understand perfectly well. Perhaps they live in a parallel universe where British Israelism really is true.

Several years ago, for a brief period of time, I picked up a particularly dogged critic who had suddenly burst upon a number of the blogs. After a while, another blogger who knew him explained that the guy had no life, that he was unemployed, living in his grandparents' basement, just kind of hanging out at his computer, sitting there in his underwear, with delusions of his own grandeur. That explanation really put things into perspective.

The point is, there are some people who blog whom we've actually known as a result of our personal participation in Armstrongism. There are others whose body of work, written track record, is indicative of intelligence and substance. There are the anonymous unwashed ones, some who make legitimate contributions, and others who delight in taking driveby potshots at the regulars, typing things that they would never dare say if they met the object of their comments in a back alley. And, over the years there have been nebulous ones who sometimes become quite prominent and prolific, but who in time contradict themselves, forgetting along the way parts of the image they have attempted to falsely create for themselves, and lapsing into just plain weirdness, eventually losing their credibility. In the end, they disappear, but people will occasionally remind us of some of their more bizarre sayings after they have ceased posting. Who knows what motivates them! After a while, one becomes adept at recognizing the profile, and at avoiding feeding them. There are some that you just can't accept at face value, or take seriously.

The important thing here is to focus on the extremism of Armstrongism. Racism is only a part of the picture, albeit it is an important part.

Herbert Armstrong, as deficient as he was, managed to create an hierarchy of the elite. These were / are self-entitled pretenders claiming, based on no particular foundation, that they are superior and they are in charge.

The problem here is trivialization, the true core of human problems. The assumption that one human being is inherently superior to another, particularly when it is based upon supposedly revealed superior knowledge, renders a false power of control over those regarded as lesser.

The narcissists find reasons to assert their superiority over those without that particular mental disorder and make them seem reasonable to a limited number of people who follow them because they recognize the supposed 'superiority'.

Thus, the bully is given power to oppress others. This creates within them an increase of dopamine levels which leads to their addiction to being considered elite. After a time, they become so used to the perversion of their position that they don't even notice how they have changed in order to enjoy their addiction.

This is particularly true when those oppressed become slaves to the elite: They can get those 'below' them to do what they want (and, of course, they want nice things). The induce devotion so that those at lower levels gain such loyalty to the elite that they will make huge sacrifices to the elite -- even to their own detriment. This certainly happened in the Southern United States in the 19th century as those in Africa sold their village bretheren to slave traders. Those sold became slaves and lost their freedom while they made their 'owners' rich.

The elite find all sorts of excuses to promote themselves and trivialize those who become their slaves. They are parasite predators who live off of their hapless hosts. This gave rise to white supremacy. It is also the core foundation of British Israelism which made white supremacy a gift of God to lord it over the nations subject to the British Commonwealth. It was a palliative to condone the terrible and hideous acts of aggression to those thought to be lesser species -- such as the black people.

One gets this wonder vignette in Shindler's List where the commandant reveals his belief that Jews are sub human. It is that attitude which fueled the Worldwide Church of God.

As an aside, here is a comment of someone who left Wordpress that people here might find instructive in "Farewell to Wordpress":

"Bitterness, hatred, idolatry, bigotry, back-stabbing, egotism, alcoholism, envy, jealousy, and secret agendas are rampant. The closer you are to “The Community” the more you’ll see it and get hurt. It’s all very surreal.

"It pains me seeing people blindly following a dictating leader. I hate seeing people worship wolves in sheep’s clothing. I despise seeing the drama and the jealousy and the secret agendas."

I am not your (imagined) enemy, nor a post armstrongite, nor do I have any wish or desire to "convince" you or anyone for that matter. My point is I wouldn't let a doctor of technology look at my spleen for one minute. That's all.

Your fine as you are and that is good with me.

My sources are fine too and as I said it saves me a heck of time to only post them if asked. Just being practical.

-a random group of ordinary people being given blue shirts and the other 50% percent red shirts. Suddenly the equals are close to warring factions or at least competitive.-smoke being blown into a room and nobody moving until a leader or one person says I am leaving.-bystanders looking at a person drowning and nobody moving until one person gives the command

abhu graib was a set up. Military schools taught the officers exactly about what happens in such circumstances. And guess what. They create exactly such a space with lower class as leaders.

I like your point on the Nazi's. Exactly what happens when lower class people rise to power positions way too fast. It was the exact attration of Nazism. To get rid of the old structures and have huge social climbing of the ladder within 5 years. Guess what type of bankers were most corrupt. Extremely intelligent but fast track lower class social climbers without the necessary sacrifice needed for positions of power.

I agree with Black Ops. Armstrongism is a system. Only one of its moving parts is racism. It is bound together by the dynamics of promoting the ego of a single man. Armstrongism, aptly named, is all about HWA and those who want to be like him.

When the idea that one man is worth more than all others, a system of determining human value is introduced. The system is based on the subjective view, of course, of the one man who is worth more than all the others whether Hitler, Stalin, David Koresh or HWA.

When I showed up on the BS campus, there was as strict pyramidal hierarchy. (Maybe this is what HWA learned from his fascination with the Great Pyramid.) Those at the glorious and self-preoccupied top controlled the lives and fortunes of those raggedy minions in the lower reaches of the pyramid. Because the top outfitted themselves as the unquestionable and authoritative representatives of God. The gullible lower tiers swallowed this mythology whole because they were looking for a tiny ration of hope - usually withheld from them by their uncharitable leaders.

This preoccupation with rank at the BS campus led to all kinds of bizarre and non-Christian behavior. Pride, ambition, conceit, vanity, the usual. Read C.S.Lewis' essay entitled the "Inner Circle".

So now the Armstrongist spliters are filled with the little tarnished and fallen images of HWA - trying their best to be like him and yet somehow failing.

Isn't the FOT about to begin? I wonder who is going to fly around to different sites and be a "special speaker" like GTA used to? Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery - but if you imitate someone who went to destruction, it might be worth reconsidering.

I have wondered what the difference between "left" and "right" is at its most core. The original or classical meanings of "conservative" (keep the monarchy) and "liberal" (individual rights and limited government)--or the original terms "left" and "right" as seating arrangements in the French Revolution's National Assembly ("right" = keep the monarchy; "left" = abolish the monarchy)--do not accurately characterize "left" and "right”.

I am convinced the core issue is the matter of caste or social stratification.

"Left" in all varieties, whether the social democratic mainstream parties of Canada and West European nations, or the totalitarian one-party-state Leninisms, all have in common some notion in theory that social stratifications or inherited entitlements of certain classes or races to higher status than others is wrong.

"Right" in all varieties, whether the free-market conservatives of America, or the fascisms of mid-20th century Europe or Latin America and the far-right parties of Europe today, all have in common some notion that stratifications in the social order are either divinely ordained or naturally ordained (e.g. the poorer classes or races or ethnic groups "deserve" to be poor because of reasons x, y, z; and the privileged classes or races are entitled to greater comforts or status over their lessers for legitimate reasons x, y, z).

In this context HWA/WCG was a variant of right-wingism. Because HWA was a product of the American heartland and the Pacific Northwest of the early 20th century, with ideas in the air of eugenics, races as biological entities, biblical fundamentalism, etc and etc., combined with HWA’s success at building a church under his personal control combined with his fixations on such issues ... this produced the toxic forms of social stratification and racism internal to the WCG which continues in stronger or weaker forms in the WCG-successor groups with the exception of the actual post-HWA WCG/GCI which has explicitly repudiated both HWA and racism and (also for other reasons) is regarded as apostate by the other groups.

The old WCG's right-wingism came out in so many ways: hostility to labor unions; belief in segregationism combined with anti-black racism in practice; militarism e.g. calls to do horrific violence to or nuke heathen godless "non-Israelite" nations such as Cuba and North Vietnam; HWA's regard for Richard Nixon as America's greatest president; the fetish for violence at the family level (harsh corporal punishment); hostility to the language of "human rights"; inequality and subordination of women; justification for dispossession of native peoples; opposition to democracy in word and principle; the fetish for ministerial class hierarchy and special privileges (chief seats, chief parking lots, chief titles, chief homes)…

HWA/WCG was a product of the times, but not only a product of the times, because in the latter case WCG would have changed either slightly ahead of or about with the same pace of mainstream America on racial issues... but it did not, it was STUCK. Most of us can cite cases of older family members or older people we have known, flawed but sincere, who genuinely changed and grew on racial issues over time (or maybe those cases were ourselves). Even Alabama Governor George Wallace, the segregationist appealer to angry white-racist populist instincts and national presidential candidate of 1968 and 1972, changed in the later years of his life. But HWA and some of the ministers carrying out his legacy never changed, as if something within them was incapable of any real reflection or growth on such issues. Why that is, God only knows.

nck, I have read a bit on the spooky side of things (e.g. James Galbraith on JFK vs. Joint Chiefs; David Talbot on Dulles, etc.) and I admit the WCG story would be more interesting if it could be shown there were hidden hands behind HWA/WCG. You are probably aware of Noam Chomsky's view toward conspiracy theories: unless they are proven he has no use for them, because they derail discussion and energy from issues that matter in plain sight and uncontroversial as to fact.

I read the link you gave at 11 Oct 22:29 and you posted too quickly, it has nothing to do with US use of religious groups as soft power diplomacy. It is about the opposite, of religious groups influencing public policy, something the WCG did not do. Even on issues on which WCG agreed, such as anti-abortion or creationism or keeping the Panama Canal, the WCG did not get involved with other evangelical-right groups in attempts to lobby or influence legislation or undertake such itself.

On HWA/Rader giving money to Philippine ruling circles, and similarly elsewhere, that looks like influence-buying, analogous to the issues of foreign governments giving donations to the Clinton Foundation. Rader via AICF was basically using WCG as a cash cow and for long-term asset-stripping to provide money to buy influence in foreign lands just like wealthy donors donate to campaigns of Congresspersons in positions of influence. Nearly all of this is legal as long as there is no explicit evidence of quid pro quo, as most of the time there is not.

Why would Rader orchestrate donations to buy influence in foreign lands? I assume to attain and then use or monetize that influence. There are all sorts of ways to monetize influence, and the accident of the internal coup of Tkach et al with HWA that removed Rader may have meant Rader never cashed in or was able to realize much of what was in place to be done if Rader had continued in power beyond the death of the ever-mercurial HWA. As long as HWA lived HWA had life-and-death power over Rader’s plans. HWA was Mr. Big and Rader was the Man with a Plan. Of course Rader cashed out with a terrific golden parachute, courtesy of WCG tithepayers, after HWA fired him, perhaps in exchange for not publicizing whatever blackmail he had on HWA. So Rader came out OK either way.

Rader was a sharp lawyer who as a young man discovered the wonderful world of financial opportunities in nonprofits, one in particular (HWA/WCG). Think J.R. Ewing in the old television show “Dallas”. The dropping of charges on Gotoh by US Customs in San Pedro, California, in 1976 to the frustration of the Customs agents because of pressure "from above", as reported in Trechak's old AR, is compatible with, though short of proof of, Gotoh being useful to some US or US ally’s interest. According to Trechak’s AR, at some point after that a Glenn Bailey of Tennessee (same name as a fellow student in my class at Big Sandy although I do not know if it is the same person) filed FOIA requests to FBI and CIA for files on HWA/WCG et al and received back the following: CIA said they could find no files. FBI did have a large file which Bailey was sent but most of it was blacked out as classified. Was that some FBI investigation which was classified because it involved an intelligence source or a sensitive US ally relationship? Who knows. If there was state agency involvement in HWA’s travels it could have involved as little as a single informant in the Rader/HWA entourage providing information.

I have done quite a bit of speculating here, but this is my best guess as to some approximation of what might have been going on. It is always possible that hard information could come to light in the future. But a long time has now passed and nothing has come forth yet, so I suspect not much if anything of significance is likely to come forth further at this point, most likely because there was not much there to begin with relatively speaking, above the level of a J.R. Ewing-like character and an aged Apostle, characters matching anything in fiction.

Well, I am sorry to say I heard racist comments in my first few years in WCG (82-86). I was so embarrassed to be associated with some of the things I heard. We were doing one of the fund raisers at K-mart...inverntory. At lunch one of the fellows was talking about how inferior Blacks were...that they would all need to be led by us Israelites...basically, they were genetically created to be led. Could not do it on their own...Ì mean look at SOuth Africa`.

Racism has many roots. Jealousy is certainly one of them, as in the case of wealthy or talented Jewish people. Displacement is another, as in the case of job loss by one group to members of another who are either more efficient, or willing to work for less compensation. And then, there is hatred for ethnic groups who appear to be responsible for creating damage, or threatening one's way of life.

It becomes a problem when one's church foments racism, or exemplifies institutionalized racism in administering church government, rather than promoting understanding, and teaching members to successfully interact with people who are different from ourselves. A church claiming to represent God has the responsibility of taking the moral high ground, of teaching a better way of dealing with human nature and human emotion. How is the world made a better or fairer place by teaching that certain groups are inferior and needing to be subjugated? Subjugating bad or damaging philosophies like communism, radical Islam, or apartheid is not wrong. Subjugating entire groups of people based soley on their ethnicity is an act committed against the one whom churches claim is their maker.

The major effect of racism that has not been overlooked in the responses here but may be understated is the effect on the lives of real people. Racism certainly has theological, political and biological implications that can be debated. But in the last analysis it is about people, how they relate to each other and how they understand reality.

What if you are a person of color, become convinced that you are hearing the spokesman for God on the radio and make contact with the RCG or WCG. After some shuck and jive you find yourself sitting in a rented hall listening to a man that you believe is the true representative of God's true church led by his true apostle. And then you discover that you are regarded by this organization as a throughgoing inferior. Then you deduce that this view must originate with God himself. This is not just Dean's viewpoint, it is God's viewpoint. It is a blow that most "Israelite" members cannot imagine dealing with. They were on the opposite and prideful side of this transaction.

So then there is the practice - the litany of bad experiences. I recall two people on the BS Campus who wanted to get married. One was Hispanic so the marriage was not permitted. There are the separate "Fun Nights" at the FOT. The seating arrangements at the FOT. Dean Blackwell and Gerald Waterhouse touring the country preaching racist dogma and attempting to support it with the Bible. The glowing faces of low class, poorly educated white people who just had their egos stroked by such preaching. Creepy lay members sidling up to Native Americans to tell them that they should have been exterminated for whatever pathological gratification that might provide. You know the deal.

Racism unjustifiably makes some people feel inferior and unjustifiably makes some people feel superior, and we may add if this is intensified by religion, "in the sight of God."

Racism fit well into the fund raising efforts of the WCG. Essentially, there were two broad classes of people in the WCG. Those who were "uses" of funding and those who were "sources" of funding. Funds were "used" to support the upper class and funds were extracted from the under class. The upper class wanted the under class to feel condemned, sinful, wretched, "the cream of the crud", racially inferior in some cases and "the weak of the earth" as a ploy to make the under class give up on ever having anything in life so they would part more easily with their limited amount money.

This is modeled after the Southern States, the Old Confederacy, where the Southern Aristocracy oppressed and fed religion to poor Whites and poor Blacks, kept them poor, starving and divided against each other. I think some of the ministers that I met on the BS Campus thought of themselves as the reincarnation of the Southern Aristocracy though I really doubt that their families came from that class historically. HWA always disliked the BS Campus and his feeling probably had some merit.

I used to talk with a faculty member at the BS Campus named Berlin Guillory. (At the mention of this name, some Armstrongists will give each other a knowing look because Berlin was regarded as an odd-ball, not acceptable to good, well indoctrinated Armstrongists.) Near the end of his association with the BS Campus, he became very disenchanted. I asked him why in particular. And he said something that I did not believe at the time but came to finally acknowledge. He said "These people (the WCG ministry) play with peoples lives."

NEO, you nailed it, along with so many contributions of others here such as the always-insightful Byker Bob, Pamela Dewey and so many others. And if we have ears to hear, some of these same issues, seemingly so "dated" or past history in a particular church's history, are being played out on larger scales in the American body politic, right now...

As a white AC student I did not experience the things NEO has described. I did not feel the wounds directly.

In my sophomore year at Big Sandy in 1974 I wrote a paper arguing that nothing in the Bible forbade interracial marriage or dating, and submitted it to Mr. Dart. Mr. Dart told me he would take it up with the Doctrinal Committee, and that was the last I ever heard about it. Over ten years later in the mid-1980s the doctrine was still formally unchanged when I called Ministerial Services in Pasadena to fact-check the current church position on interracial marriage for a book I was writing. I was told no one was available to speak with me to answer that question. When I asked the secretary who answered the phone if she could tell me herself, she said she was not able to either. Nor was anyone willing to call me back at a later time to answer the question. That is how much of a hot potato the doctrine had become at that stage—literal unwillingness to give a simple straight answer as to what the church doctrine was, as if it was a secret. A few months later Tkach Sr. announced that the doctrine was changed. I like to speculate that my long-distance phone inquiry played some small role in heightening the dissonance at headquarters which led up to that announcement.

In 1971 in the Akron, Ohio church Spokesman's Club when I was a senior in high school, I well remember one sincere young man, a 1-W in the Akron church, who gave his speech on what had been done to Native Americans by Europeans settling America and how wrong it had been. He spoke from the heart against attitudes of racism toward Native Americans. There was discomfort in the room because everyone knew that the local pastor, who was right there, had repeatedly given sermons with strong statements about "heathen savages" and "squatters" on land God had given white European Israelites and that Native Americans were no better than ancient Canaanites who did abominable customs meriting God's biblical command to wipe them out, etc. However, everyone also liked the young man (who was a couple of years older than me). He was somewhat new to the church.

The pastor was surprisingly mild and diplomatic in expressing his disagreement with the young man's argument in his evaluation, and an awkward scene was averted. Some time later I heard that same young man tell a few church members in conversation that it had taken him a long time to see the pastor's point of view on how genocide of Native Americans was not such a bad thing in the eyes of God, and that he had prayed about it, and had finally come to see the pastor's point of view. He said that issue had been a real problem for him in his early stages in the church. I do not know what became of him but I hope his original instincts, which were good, returned to him at some point.

I knew NEO at Big Sandy, though I wish I had gotten to know him better. My experience at Big Sandy, largely the idyllic part as privileged student status, and white, was different from NEO's. NEO later wrote Dr. Hoeh and engaged Hoeh on race issues and Hoeh responded. But Dr. Hoeh's responses were guarded, a sort of “mistakes happened” sort of response, attributing policies of the church to pressures from outer society--an opportunity for actual acknowledgement, repentance, and leadership on his part on this issue missed.

WCG/AC is now a former era. But similar core issues are being played out in America today--the cultlike attitudes, demagoguery, racist code-word speech, conspiracy theories, demonization language of ethnic groups, Gerald Waterhouse-like talk at the presidential candidate level, worse than WCG. For those of us who are Americans, let us take the lessons from WCG and, with eyes opened, respond intelligently in our communities in our present situation.

When I was at the BS Campus, I tried to meet with Dean Blackwell. I intended to take issue with some of the ideas he preached about race. For some reason, I could not get in to see him for a long time. I checked with his office staff several times. I recall overhearing some secretaries talking about my situation. Their attitude was that I was "high maintenance" in modern parlance. Someone who was going to waste time with peripheral issues.

I finally met with Blackwell and it was unsatisfying. He talked around the subject a lot and I left.

One must qualify the term "racial intermarriage" as used by the then WCG. Church Administration's idea of race was dictated by Herman Hoeh's research. Hoeh's research has been demonstrated by the modern science of genetics to be deeply flawed. For instance, the Spanish people residing in Spain were regarded by Hoeh as a different race from the Celtic people of Britain. But they are not. The Spanish, too, are Celtic, possess the same haplogroup. They are mixed with some other Mediterranean peoples, including the Sephardic Jews who have lived in Spain for centuries and were even referred to by Isaiah. So a Spanish guy at BS was not permitted to marry an Anglo girl. This was because she was an "Israelite" and he was a Gentile of a different race. In fact, we now know that she was a Gentile and he very likely had some Jewish ancestry (estimated by some geneticists to be around 20% on average for the European Spanish people.) and both were of Celtic extraction - of the same race. This is the kind of disarray one finds when pseudo-science displaces and disgraces science. Of course, the science of genetics was not really off-the-ground then. But I notice that there has been no mad rush by Armstrongists to now make their policies coincide with the truth of genetic science.

On that issue, I believe that the old Armstrongists views on race still stand in the various splinter groups. Since I have never heard any renunciation or modification of the traditional stance, I assume that Havir, Ward and Mark Armstrong, et al, still support the old views.

I think the splinters should come clean on this issue. They should publish a racial policy and include it along with their list of beliefs on their websites. It is an important and defining characteristic of their denominations. Others would be warned. My guess is that this is a dead issue in their congregations because there is no pressure internally or externally to address the topic. Nobody cares about these little odd-ball COGs. And the few people of color who populate their congregations are thoroughly indoctrinated, have accommodated and are disinclined to rock the boat.

I should mention that I was at the BS FOT years ago after Blacks were permitted to sit anywhere they wanted to. But they didn't. They all sat at the back of the congregation and for the most part together. Rod Meredith during services stated from the pulpit that they did not have to sit in back they could come up and sit in front just like anyone else. At the next service, a solid block of Blacks were sitting in front. I relate this anecdote not to underscore Meredith's compassion but rather the primacy of obedience within the WCG. People did what they were told as if obeying God. This makes the leaders largely accountable for the standards of behavior, whether good or bad.

Dean Blackwell--he baptized me, amiable, sort of an image of a hard-working down-home unsophisticated country pastor ... complete party-line believer in whatever was the party line ... the main instructor training the male students at Big Sandy in the early 1970s in how to be a minister, in the mechanics of visiting, conducting funerals and marriages, practical details of pastoring ... about as unreflective on core issues as could be combined with some accounts of compassion on a personal level (a common combination in WCG culture) ...

NEO's accounts of attempts to discuss substantive issues with the hierarchy, such as Blackwell, and being blown off or considered a "problem" for seeking real discussion, are heartbreaking.

In my book, "Showdown at Big Sandy" (which I have lowered the price at www.lulu.com to their lowest-possible cost for printing, $12.05 plus 3.99 shipping, removing the amazon commission and any author royalty, and plan to keep it that way indefinitely), I tell the story of fellow student Murdock Gibbs.

Gibbs was turned down for admission to AC four years in a row without being told or knowing why, because he was black and unmarried. He graduated from Brandeis University and finally was among other unmarried black students admitted to AC Big Sandy after the policy changed in 1971 (following an IRS threat to remove tax-exempt status if the policy of no unmarried blacks was not ended). Gibbs went through the ministerial training program and was one of the most sincere, gifted, believing students at Big Sandy, and was a class president one year.

So after three years of AC leading to this point, Gibbs comes before the ministerial hiring committee doing interviews of the AC senior men for hiring as ministerial trainees to become pastors. The ministerial hiring committee is led by Dean Blackwell, and there are two other long-time ministers with Blackwell, a committee of three. This was D-Day for Gibbs, for his dream of serving God and his church as the best pastor he could be. If Gibbs had been white, it would have been a no-brainer: Gibbs was about the most hirable, well-suited candidate for a pastor for WCG as there could be.

The first question this committee asked Gibbs was: how did he feel about the subject of interracial marriage. This was not the question asked first or at all of white students. But for some reason—who knows, maybe the color of his skin?--it was the first question the committee asked Gibbs.

Gibbs answered truthfully that although he realized it may be inadvisable for a number of other valid reasons, he personally could not see in the Bible that interracial marriage was a sin, and that he could not see himself personally kicking someone out of the church over this issue. Gibbs had not made interracial dating or marriage an issue on campus. It was solely that he was black that prompted that first question.

That did it. Three years of ministerial training down the tube for Gibbs. Blackwell told Gibbs, "Well, until we prove to you that it is a sin, you will never be used in this work." All three on the committee agreed with the thumbs-down, and that was that. Although I knew Gibbs and had a number of good talks with him, I never knew that part of the story until I read it in the Worldwide News in 1996 and then renewed contact and learned more about it. Again showing how invisible yet real the impact of racism in individual lives is, compared to those who do not experience it.

I believe NEO is right that the splinter groups today are not forthright on race beliefs, because if they were they would lose members whichever way they went on this issue. They value revenue stream over exercising true leadership. Listen to the UTube of MLKing's "I Have a Dream" speech and feel the chills down the spine, no matter how many times one hears it. I doubt much like that is very often heard in the splinters.

By applying the wrong litmus tests, and making them ironclad, these "officials" elliminated compassionate types who realized that there are gray areas. Those of servant leader and spiritual guide profiles washed out of the program, while intrusive authoritarian enforcer types were dispatched to the field and rapidly ascended up through the ranks.

I knew of one AC graduate in Pasadena who was virtually assured of a position in the field, but had had the poor judgment to confront HWA about rock n roll. He ended up working with us at AC Press for a short while, and then faded into obscurity. Clearly they didn't want to take a chance on anyone whom they feared would not wholeheartedly teach and defend the doctrines.

"People did what they were told as if obeying God. This makes the leaders largely accountable for the standards of behavior, whether good or bad."

I was contemplating what the legal opinion on that comment would be of my professors sitting in the chairs of the judges of the Tokyo trials. But then I was distracted by Beyonces earring concert accident this weekend and people starting to cut their ears on twitter.

Ah yes, all the imagined actions the leader demands of us to make it to a better place.

But it is true general rank officers cannot hide behind the "I never said that, or "I thought this policy was required by my leader" argument since legally their rank has become inseparable of the outcome at some place. And the program leader themselves usually commit suicide (AH), gets killed (Ceasar) or is offered a safe haven in Southern France (Idi Amin) or Washington. (shah Iran) (Or gets to develop the new Nasa rocket program.)

I find the personal accounts of contributors like NEO very interesting and valuable.On the downside I would wish that some Kenyan, Tanzanian, Philipine, Spanish, Burmese, Uganian, former members would weigh in the discussion on now they interpreted the gist of the discussion during their tenure.

Of course NEO's account is all true. But I am wondering how those redneck American attitudes affected the Worldwide work and worldwide interpretation of said leanings.Is is my educated opinion that WCG was a work of worldwide scope and most discussions and interpretation on race and wcg etc focus on local american issues even if US is a powerful country.

If I am not correct I would stand corrected by a Kenyan (former) member if they indeed felt like American blacks as "side stepped from the promise." Also if there are black US (former) members reading comments. Do they recognize what is written here and are they silent because they feel some are eloquent spokesmen for them, or do they accept the label of "Uncle Tom" that is stamped upon them by the same?

Briefly, the case Armstongists make against racial intermarriage is flawed. As background, I support the idea that you should marry as close to your own characteristics of every sort as possible. Two flawed beings entering into a covenant is going to be difficult to manage and the more there is in common, the less the conflict.

1. One of the principal Biblical foundations against racial intermarriage is the fact that God prohibited Israel from intermarry with Canaanites. Armstrongism interprets the Canaanites to be Blacks. (Oddly, supposed Canaanites in other parts of the world where the British people settled were of different races, decidedly not Black.) We know from genetic research done by the National Geographic Society that the Canaanites are not Blacks. They are haplogroup J people genetically indistinguishable from the Jews. In fact, they are the modern Lebanese people. God's prohibition was theological-cultural and not racial.

2. Noah was pure in his generations. This is unlikely to be a racial statement but if it were, where do Noah's "generations" begin. Genetic Adam was a Black man who was haplogroup A and lived in South Central Africa maybe 100,000 years ago. There were many racial mutations that occurred before you get from haplogroup A down to a guy who is haplogroup J living in palestine only a few thousand years ago. Noah can be thought of being pure in his generations only from Adam to Noah which meant that Adam, Noah, Shem, Ham and Japheth were all haplogroup J and were racially like other Middle Easterners. The Canaanites being haplogroup J supports this scenario.

Some have stated that HWA was pure in his generations like Noah. Europeans have in their genome the genes of Neanderthals. Modern Black Africans do not have Neanderthal genes because their ancestors did not encounter the Neanderthal in Europe. The human genome indicates that the first modern humans who entered Europe were dark-skinned and the Neanderthals were light skinned, some having reddish hair. The full Neanderthal genome has been decoded. Neanderthals were quite different from Modern Humans and represent an extreme in racial intermarriage. It is surprising that they could even interbreed with modern humans. Herbert had Neanderthal genes just like other Europeans.

Paul's statement that all men are of the same blood is supported by modern genetics. Human beings form a single interbreeding population crossing all haplogroups.

Foundational to this is the understanding that Adam was a neolithic farmer who was haplogroup J. He was not the progenitor biologically of all of humankind but was the spiritual archetype of humankind. At the time that Adam was created through the process of receiving the image of God, there were already the full range of current races around the globe. That's why Cain married into a nearby tribe. The King James translation inaccurately globalizes what are really regional events.

I am not sure what else that Armstrongists use to support the prohibition against racial intermarriage. I am not even sure what their view is at this time. This is something they hide away from public view and seem to be ashamed of. But my guess is that their racial views are likely to need serious revision. But as Scrollery mentioned, any revision of the doctrine on races will result in people forming new and even more strongly racist splinter groups and a splitting of the tithe base. So there are good economic reasons for Armstrongists to sweep this under the carpet.

The WCG was at its genesis, an American church, which later took on an international scope. Just as much of the intrusion and cruelty was said to have been minimized in the more rural areas of the US, it is quite possible that the same minimization happened in different areas of the globe, such as those you mentioned. Also, there are and were different forms of government prevalent in those areas, and it is possible that in many cases Armstrongism appeared less cruel in comparison to local prevailing conditions. The people there are also accustomed to lower socioeconomic conditions. We do know from Ambassador Reports that the ministers representing many of the nations around the world petitioned HWA and WCG regarding the devastating effects of three tithes + generous offerings. I don't know that he ever gave them any relief to this.

Way back in the early '70s, I had met people whose lives and conditions were so bad, and so far below average American standards that the WCG actually did some good in their lives, providing some elevation. What many people in the US don't realize is that the apocalyptic gospel for such people as have little hope of conditions becoming better in their lifetimes is even downright encouraging, because it means to those people that God is going to push the reset button for them, bringing an end to the misery. So a message of a horrible apocalypse becomes a message of tremendous hope to them.

Is there a significant black population in the Philippines? Are people of African descent the majority in some of the nations to which you alluded? Those factors would be of comparatively great influence on the attitudes of local WCG members present in those areas. For reason of language and communication, most of the regulars on English speaking blogs aren't from the countries you mentioned. Personally, I've got a globe in my office. But I would bet that many bloggers couldn't even approximate where the countries you specifically mentioned are located, what color the majority population happens to be, and what the predominant language is. Quite frankly, Gavin even finds himself explaining the meaning of Kiwi slang to us Yanks from time to time.

Armstrongism, wherever it is practiced, is a very powerful, and unfortunately long-lasting modifier. To know how to isolate its bad effects in the presence of various cultures, one would need to live in those cultures. But, in the end, it is much like communism in that it stifles the human spirit, is largely unworkable, corrupting its leaders and producing horrible evil fruits no matter where it is practiced, or how many times.

Ah yes. Interesting comment on how effects could differ depending on local cultures or socio economic circumstances.

It is true in international areas there would be modifiers due to local culture, different outlook and perhaps even better education among the first members than the american leaders.

The case in many (african) areas would be that only the regional director would have been an American redneck while local pastors might have been university schooled former civil servants or employees of foreign companies. This was the time of decolonisation and the total collapse of the British empires as demanded by the USA. Many local civil servants would have seen their world collapse while the danger of communism loomed on the horizon with largely uneducated masses of people in lower social strata.

This nucleus of first members during the foreign expansion phase of rcg would be added to by disgruntled SDA church members which is now a reputable church but in the fifties and sixties was already big and far more cult like than it is now. Later more local people would join of course.

In the Philipines church members would have to make HUGE social sacrifice in joining a protestant "church"/cult with the majority of the population being catholic which had its own defectors.

The American empire stepped in the vaccuum of the vacating former colonizers and also needed its own adherents or base (to propagate is message of free markets/the unseen hand and liberal trade through education). It is no accident that Jomo Kenyatta was lauded as one of hwa's first international "friends" and cooperation was sought in the field of education.

(btw in the first service after hwa's death the tithe of the tithe or third tithe was abolished for the european areas because of their advanced welfare system. It was announced as being hwa's last decision but it might have been tkach his first. I go with hwa's last decision. Well even nowadays I cannot pay holiday expenses from a tithe of my income. I would use more. So I don't understand the fuss about the second tithe. Well the first tithe was of course cash flow for "the work."

NEOI am somewhat worried by the latest findings in science.In the past I used to know that modern man had not interbred with the protothype neanderthal humanoid. Now the past few years latest scientific evidence seems to indicate that there indeed was large scale interbreeding.

This shakes the very foundation of my believe that allmen are equal.

Even the bible seems to support the equality of men since all races are descended from one man and woman in the narrative.

Now it seems there is a large possibility that there indeed just might be inferior humanoids. In the sense that the next lush pale faced freckled redhead might just infect humanity with terrible kidney disease through her neanderthal genes.

I am terribly worried with the advance of science and social constructs not being able to keep up with those findings.

In the same sense that hwa worried in his time about the "scientific rise of Darwinism and evolution theory in all sciences. It was of course this radical revolution in social science that sparked a reaction in american society that spawned "fundamentalism" as a reaction to these modern insights.

As humans are prone to perfect their surroundings and stratify according to insights, do you share that same anxiety reading those latest findings?

Apparently, non-Africans have a small effect from Neanderthal genetics (Africans have no effect at all). The effect is not large but detectable. It is thought that modern humans benefited through inheritance from the Neanderthal immune system. I would not call the interbreeding "large scale." The Neanderthal population was pretty small and easily absorbed by the encroaching moderns. Moreover, this effect is thoroughly dispersed into the modern genome. It is not possible to say this guy is more Neanderthal than that guy. If we wanted to use a standard like that, we would have to conclude that Africans are superior to Europeans and Asians because they have no Neanderthal evidence in their genome.

The topic of "the equality of man" is not an easy one. I believe that all men are marked with the image of God and have the potential for salvation and should be respected accordingly. I am not sure that this special estate can be mapped to any kind of pragmatic equality otherwise. I do not believe we are descended from one man and one woman both of whom lived in the Neolithic. That particular phenomenon of descent would not guarantee equality anyway.

I think Byker Bob is right that the core appeal and success of hwa/wcg was the apocalyptic message that the end is near. There was an article on Alternet two days ago, Oct. 15, entitled "Trump's Worldview Mirrors the Most Archaic and Apocalyptic of Christian Beliefs", written by a psychologist who counsels ex-fundamentalists, Marlene Winnell.

Here are characteristics Winnell notes of the Trump campaign, which despite opposition of just about the entire national media, much of the Republican Party itself, a decisive majority of women, and nearly the whole rest of the world, remains behind by only a few percentage points, barely beyond polling margin of error, of becoming the next President of the United States. Winnell details the following as the basic message and appeal of the Trump phenomenon. Thoughtful people who have followed this discussion may see parallels to the hwa era, the old Plain Truth magazine, the old sermons.

1) The world is a bad and dangerous place.2) Might is right.3) A savior is needed.4) Simplistic thinking is adequate.5) Obedience is key.6) Violence is key.7) Prejudice is acceptable.8) Earth is dispensible.9) Exclusive self-interest is moral.10) America has lost its way.

Just as HWA was able to speak with power and authority and it resonated and succeeded, so the plain-speaking Trump strikes the same chords in the American heartland, and 40% of America has signed on. As Yogi Berra used to say, it is deja vu all over again.

On #6, most wcg-ers were nonviolent just as are most Trump supporters, but this is about support for larger policies. For example, polls by the Pew organization have found that support for torture rises and correlates with belief in fundamentalist Christianity. Trump calls openly for lots of torture and most of his voter base is OK with that. Similarly, you do not see ringing categorical condemnations of torture in COG publications in opposition to the half of America which now thinks torture is OK.

Was racism essential to the old WCG or peripheral or non-existent? Is racism essential to the Trump phenomenon or peripheral or non-existent? Similar issues, similar range of opinion and perception on these questions.

Imagine the old HWA, Gerald Waterhouse, Roderick Meredith ministerial types, with their conspiracy theories, their demonization of defectors and opponents, their rantings of America showing the rest of the world who is boss militarily, their images of use of force in the wonderful world tomorrow ... imagine those types taking power of the American state, the greatest military power on earth.

I like all of your contributions so far since it's lingo is entirely adapted to my normal behavior. There are only minor points we would be discussing over a beer. On the other hand some claim it is ALL in the detail.

I would only add that it was not only hwa message that "the end was near". There is no appeal in that. The appeal was that everyone knew that "The end was near":-Schoolchildren were hiding under their desk-Scientist moved the doomsday clock forward in the news-Biafra was dying etc etc etc

And HWA fulfilled the role of missionary in common game theory with his large media apparatus and exposure.

As I was discussing with NEO just as it is now the thirties were a time of radical social change. And this is no other time. Trump is not a cause he is an effect that started when the Republican party was demolished from the inside by earlier examples like Palin and her mmovement who were also an effect of a larger populace that does not seem to be keeping up with the pace of rapid change. Some even claim that coal will come back once Trump is elected.

Oh yes, of course Palin knows all about foreign politics. She can see Russia from her window.Yes it all right to place assault weapons next to their border and not expect them to react agressively.

Indeed these clowns channel the yearning for a "better simpler" world that never was. They function as messiah's. But ultimately simple solutions lead to desctruction and they turn out to be false prophets. (oops sorry occams razor)

Perhaps one can explain what is the difference between "order in a confused world brought by a rod of iron", or "the unseen hand from someplace" that was preached to the rotary, lions, kiwanis of our allies by that other "prophet" and all present would recognize that as a veiled threat of nuclear destruction or the powerful force of free market capitalism sweeping away protectionist policies.

And indeed how do we translate our past experience in a recognition of what is happening today and steer free from "that what is plain or easy."

When we were growing up doing our air raid drills, worst case scenario didn't ever occur to me. I had a pretty good childhood going on right up until my parents read us 1975 in Prophecy one summer Saturday afternoon on our front porch. Life really sucked for the next twenty years. I kept asking myself, "Why do I have to know this?" If the end really were forthcoming, really I would have preferred to just live life, and face whatever came along whenever with everyone else. As it turned out, it was all ignorance anyway, and we were scared and manipulated for no reason save to enrich a false prophet. It amazes me the tenacity with which the remnant still hangs on to the same old miserable package. Just today, Gary over at Banned posted about a guy who is still preaching Petra, and a group that is building a sanctuary. Unbelievable!

The people who buy into the whole end of the world scenario can't be naturally happy people, or content and satisfied with their lives in the present. I personally feel that they would carry their dissatisfaction into the next age, whether we call it the millennium, world tomorrow, kingdom, whatever. They are in a mode where they are programmed to find fault with everything around them. They expect the kingdom to be a silver bullet for all the many things they find fault with now. It's madness.

Contrarians make their money from the fear and misery of others by exploiting the concept of bad times just ahead. Ol' Hog Jowls was the worst of the contrarians.

But fear is not appealing in its own right.Fear is an agent for change. re Chicago school of economics and the Shock Doctrine.

In the early eighties hwa was very clear in that we would not go to Petra. He said that people might want to believe that but that he certainly would not enjoy living in the caves. And yes BB that is in print also for those who keep nagging about sources. Luckily it is all five star hotels now so the doctrine that developed from a simple remark from his tourist wife might be quite comfortable at present. No need to build sanctuaries.

"I personally feel that they would carry their dissatisfaction into the next age, whether we call it the millennium, world tomorrow, kingdom, whatever. They are in a mode where they are programmed to find fault with everything around them."

That last insight about the programming of dissatisfaction is right on target!

You are joking right?If it is truly so that you cannot read the humor and sarcasm in that Palin statement from the context than you have ceased to be a funny guy in my mind.

You will than register to me as a scary person a true mental case by all medical standards full of hatred and anxiety and probably on medication too. That will be my question and there is no need to answer in public. Are you on medication or are you being funny?

But I do still feel you are "taking the mickey" out of me. But I may be naive.

What is your point actually by debunking my Palin statement. That Mrs Palin is well versed in international relations? If that would be the case that would make you a triple blessed ignoramus. But as I said. For your sake I still hope you are being funny in a deconstructive way. I would apreciate such humor if it weren't for your continual lies. (which serve a good purpose I admit but you are a liar nevertheless, albeit for a good cause)

That's it. I made the 100 so I'll take a rest. Unless of course there would be questions (hahah). That would be a sarcastic joke too since psycho's don't ask questions, I know.

To be completely 100% sure my last three posts pertain Mikey. BB is just a man with a mission. But Mikey is not sane.

I see a strong parallel between Trump and the message of HWA. Both tap into the core of fear and dissatisfaction that many people in America feel. I cannot help but feel that HWA would be very impressed with Donald Trump and would deprecate Hillary Clinton ("women shall rule over them"). It would also seem like Trump would appeal to the "Left Behind" crowd.

Charles Manson tried to precipitate an apocalyptic race war by committing some murders. I think some of the Trump followers will pursue this strategy with violence and that we will see this play out on our TV screens in the weeks ahead. There is already some talk of a coup and bloodshed if Clinton wins. I hope this does not happen but this kind of lunacy seems more plausible now than two months ago.

The fact is, the apocalyptic ploy works well if done in the proper context. There are people who want to be on the plane to Petra while everyone else goes to hell. There are people who want to see the "Gentiles" crushed on the Day of the Lord. What deep personal insecurities or pathologies lead to this is a topic for psychiatrists.

When I went to college as a freshman, I took a copy of "1975 in Prophecy" with me. I was utterly convinced that in this little booklet with its garish artwork was a portal through which I could view the horrific future. I was with some other freshman in a dorm room, about five or so guys, and I hauled the book out and showed it to them. They thought it was ludicrous. I was appalled. In my mind I said "You just wait and see!!"

At this time, many decades later, I cannot tell you why I was a looney tune and they were normal. There was some deficiency in my personal profile that made me susceptible to being hooked by an apocalyptic cult. And I was. And it seemed that the cult could preach all kinds of bizarre ideas and I would accommodate to this because of the urgency of the End of the Age. Just like Trump said, he could pull out a gun and shoot someone on 5th Avenue in New York City and his base would not abandon him.

At some point, I realized that the Herbert and Garner Show was "full of sound and fury signifying nothing." It took me about thirty years and untold amounts of exasperation and money - blood and treasure. And the guys who laughed at me in the dorm room when I was a freshman went on, after giving me the nickname "The Preacher", to have normal lives.

I was of mixed racial background and I joined a "church" that believed that racial intermarriage was a sin and as a product of such a marriage, I was defective. In doing this, Armstrongism inaugurated a new form of "unpardonable sin" not contained in the words of Christ. I could never repent of being racially mixed.

But I persisted in my dedication. I soldiered on weighted down by my racial burden. Now I regard this to have been a tour through an insane asylum. I was Randle McMurphy and the WCG was my Nurse Ratched.

I am saddened by Armstrongism and wish that its prisoners could be set free from themselves.

NEO- It's been my experience that multi-ethnic people are totally cool because they draw from the experience of two communities. My son is half Hispanic. Being married into a Hispanic family enriched me in many ways that I would not have experienced otherwise. I've also dated African American ladies. Racists are truly the ones who are losing out, and because of their closed minds, they will never know how and why.

Where I last worked, it was quite the racial mix. There was a full-blooded Italian, Native Americans, black folks, Chinese, German (from Germany with her wonderful German food she brought and let us sample) and a Japanese Colleague who did such an excellent job in his field of expertise. In fact, WASP was barely the norm (not that it made much difference). We also had a number of atheists who had quite cogent observations.

What I found was that the racial lines made very little difference if at all, particularly when the non white races were of the same social order and values as everyone else. I learned to be quite color blind.

Of course, this did not mean that I did not discriminate. I held rather unshakeable rules about some classes of people. I loathed and still loathe today, the incompetent. I detested the narcissists. Psychopaths drove me up the wall. Over my career, I had to become rather cognizant of the narcissists and psychopaths and learned to identify them early on. It was survival.

Strange thing that interracial marriage was not allowed and at the same time the having of children in such marriages was in no way prohibited. There were many examples of couples joining already married and proceeded having children. Nck

In my entering class at AC was a gentleman by the name of Tom Hall. He would have been seen as black through the rigid paradigms of the WCG, but in a meeting behind closed doors, GTA is reported as having once said, "Let's face it, Tom, you are mostly white." In fact, GTA brought Tom into one of his inner circles, the professional one.

All of us liked Mr. Hall, and actually, he was one of the members who later made the big time. He had his own show on one of the Los Angeles AM talk radio stations. That is a major radio market! Tom has been deceased for a number of years now, but I still remember his smile and his intellect. One of the good ones!

I would like to see someone send out the following question to D. Ward, M. Armstrong and D. Havir, et al:

Prior to his death, Herman Hoeh claimed that there was no theological foundation to the Racial Policy (segregation of races, intermarriage, racial identification based on published Worldwide Church of God materials) enforced by the WCG. He asserted that the policy was developed to conform to national norms at the time. The Worldwide Church of God did not want to be seen as an outlier.

What is the Racial Policy followed in your organization and why?

Of course, nobody would reply. But if there were actually transparency and accountability among the COGs, it would be interesting to see the reply.

A glance at the ucg magazine "beyond today" turns up the same old white racist schtick of the old days, which surprises me because the several ucg people I know do not talk or come across like the article "The Immigration Threat" (Sept 2016). This article says white culture is superior, white Americans are Israelites, refers to "liberal opposition to values rooted in the nation's white European history", decries the lowering percentage of whites in America demographically, etc and etc.

Closing words of this article: "Stay on the alert. Darker times are coming."

What is so odd about the british-Israel underpinning to this white supremacist schtick is that by wcg/ucg own beliefs nearly half of all American whites are not even Israelite.

Using 2014 census numbers, America has 342 million people and non-Hispanic whites number 197 million or 62%. But of those whites, 43 million German-Americans, 16 million Italian-Americans, 9 million Polish-Americans, 3 million Russian-Americans, 3 million Greek-Americans, etc. are "strangers", from Assyrians and Japheth etc and not Israel per Armstrongism/british-Israel belief. All told, by cog traditional criteria, 83-86 million of what this ucg article portrays as superior entitled whites are not even Israelite. It is so contradictory and illogical. By the cogs logic, only about 111 million out of America's 342 million people are Israelite.

It is difficult for me to believe all ucg ministers buy into this white supremacy/entitlement attitude that America rightfully belongs to one-third of its citizens, about half of Americas whites, by ancient divine entitlement.

This is why british-israelism is not only not true, it is also toxic politically as well as socially and personally, as the Jerrod book and the experiences of NEO and others illustrate on personal levels.

I doubt that they are even aware of those statistics, Greg. They believe from a doctrinal standpoint that they have the truth regarding the identity of the US and BC, and would most likely not be open to further research or even the most perfunctory fact checking.

Several years ago, I investigated some of these same factors as they pertain to Great Brittain. As it turns out, that is quite the little melting pot as well.

It would seem that ACOG blinders are no longer just optional. They are required in order to achieve 100% commitment.

Its not contradictoral. I gave the wikipedia links with the laws restricting immigration from those catholic nations and jews from the time fundamentalism started in the 1920's. In order to maintain a protestant anglo saxon nation. Now your legal history. Nck

Unfortunately the merits of wilsonian globalism and free trade have not been explained well enough to the ones who have transferred their wealth to billions of others like china. No these victims are voting for crazies like palin movement and trump. It is a relatively small number of victims as compared to the billions that profit. And yes they are of different nations. But the transferral of wealth will happen anyway. Trump and others like him are liars when they claim they can help those victims by bringing coal back. They should transfer white wealth to the american poor in order for the other billions to better their circumstances. Unfortunately they promise the impossible. Which is a return to better times. Make america great AGAIN. This return statement is the mark of a false prophet and a liar. Nck

Clintons strategy could have been so simple. By simply educating the masses and transferring domestic wealth to the needy. Now she incoherently fights the trade agreements that would have eased the pain. The relative economic rise of other populations is unstoppable. Agreements make the pain more agreeable. But it is gonna hurt some. The next world is multipolar. Nck

The world tomorrow is at our doorstep. And it is gonna feed 8 billion people through cargill and bayer monsanto. The days of the nation state are numbered. The brits as the prime example of anglo thinking are wrong in going it alone. Unite in tradingblocks or wither.nck

I certainly believe that in a political state where there is a diverse population, interracial conflict can happen. Think about the Hutu and the Tutsi. (Technically, they are not different races but different tribes within the same race but the point is still valid.) In Armstrongists publications the whole "Israelite" thing just intensifies and sharpens the conflict by placing it in a White Supremacist context.

But what can we expect from the "true believers." BI is the internal strut that supports the whole Armstrongist access to Biblical Prophecy. And prophetic doomsaying is their biggest money-maker. Kick the strut away and you would see a terrific collapse and people running into the wild to start new and yet smaller Armstrongist churches to capture some of the dwindling trove of dollars.

You really can't help these people. They are all sitting smugly at services at the Feast of Tabernacles today, confident that they are God's Chosen People and we are just mouthpieces for the Dark Side. When the Tribulation comes we will be swept away and they will be riding, smiling, to Petra, or wherever, and they will have outfoxed us.

I remember the elaborate sermons that described WCG members experiencing three and a half years of the abundance of the Feast of Tabernacles at the Place of Safety while the rest of the world went to hell in a hand basket. It was like the concept of compassion for the world's people was totally absent. Or maybe they just could not envision the consequences. Appalling.

Which brings me to a point. Maybe most Armstrongist lay members don't really even think about race and the impact that derogating policies have on targeted populations. Only the hidebound think about it and attempt to do anything about it. I remember a deacon and his wife stating casually at dinner in restaurant that all Native Americans and Hispanics should have been "wiped out." This was like a Nazi couple sitting at the table in Berlin ind 1939 and explaining how all the Jews should be wiped out. Yet they could not seem to even understand the horror of what they were saying. Some guy from Pasadena said that is what should have been done and that apparently trumped any ethics they might have owned.

Addendum: I'm sorry. I can't figure out what NCK is writing about most of the time. No offense meant.

It is possible to carry on discussions with nck. What I've found to be helpful is that you should first assume that English may not be his primary language. Give him a little extra latitude. And secondly, just discuss and debate whatever points he makes that are readily understandable. It's not a total loss or waste od time, because there are some occasional gems in there

As much as AC attempted to turn out "yellow pencils," there were outliers. I heard an associate pastor in Wichita, Kansas state that introverts would not receive salvation. Somehow I don't think Pasadena would have endorsed that. But the local people in the Wichita WCG were so cowed by the WCG ministry, none would be likely to contact Church Administration and express outrage. In fact, I didn't see anyone in the audience show evidence of disapproval of what he said.

I would bet the Aussie who stated this believed this about Whites, Yellows and Blacks before he came into the WCG. Like all those sons of the Confederacy down at the BS Campus who discovered joyfully that the WCG supported what they already believed. My guess is that many of them will never leave Armstrongism because they would have to abandon the convenient fact that their "church" certifies racism as being the will of God. The WCG was the next best thing to the Klan.

In George Orwell's "1984" there was an organized "Hate". At a certain time of day all Party members of the Party would have two minutes of pure hate against whoever they were told to hate, then return to their work. There is a "two minutes of hate" in some of the political right toward Muslims who are the equivalent today of Jews in Germany of the mid-20th century, or of Communists of the 1960s or of Native Americans of colonial days.

I remember Garner Ted Armstrong in his final years, free from his father but unchanged in message, starting to express negative attitudes toward Muslims in keeping with wider discourse on the right. Such attitudes are reflected in the literature of some of the cogs, in keeping with a wider spectrum of right-wing parties and organizations stoking anti-Islam themes in America and England and Europe.

These "targets of hate", playing on incitement and fear, these sweeping scapegoats, these racisms and bigotries applied to populations of minorities who are different in some way, go beyond reason.

It is odd when one steps back and reflects. Probably no one here likes the Mafia, but you never hear of a phobia or existential fear of all anti-Italian-Americans. For some reason we can easily distinguish between those two, without having all sorts of conspiracy theories and "two minutes of hate" against all Italian-Americans.

Why is that? Is it that Islam is a religion that is the problem?

There is violence in the Koran and history of Islam that I do not like, but I feel no animosity toward peaceful American Muslims attending mosques and running businesses and attending schools and being neighbors and their women wearing burkas or more modest swimsuits if they choose to do so. Just because their scripture may be violent does not mean they are. We can be friends and get along.

It is similar to what I think of the glorification of genocide in the book of Joshua--horrible texts--and Joshua seemed to be read and relished more in the old wcg than in other churches--texts which directly inspired the sad experiences that NEO reports of church people speaking of Native Americans deserving extermination.

Then there is the closing image of the New Testament, the close of the Christian Bible itself, which favorably portrays--think of it!--it portrays Middle Eastern “apostles and prophets” laughing uproariously in rapturous divine joy at the sight of mass deaths of huge numbers of civilians as the capital city of the Western world goes up in smoke (Rev. 18:8-20). That is in the name, not of Allah, but of Jesus Christ--who, lest we forget, was himself a brown-skinned, Palestinian-looking Middle Easterner who would not have been allowed to immigrate to America--for sure if US authorities found that part of the Bible on his person when he applied for entry.

But just because the book of Revelation and the Bible contains violence and terrorism and legislation suppressing women, that does not mean Christians are to be feared or demonized as neighbors. All of the major world religions have spectrums of moderates, liberals, and extremists, and none are bound to their texts except for the fundamentalist subsets of each religion who choose to be. And even the fundamentalists of every religion can go different ways, some pacifist and peaceful. Every world religion has its Amish people equivalents who harm nobody.

There are stories right now of Muslim children being bullied all over America by other children who channel what they pick up from their parents. This should not be. Do the COG groups take to heart Christ's parable of the Good Samaritan and proactively defend these people in our neighborhoods and schools, these children of God too? Or do COG ministers and authors of articles add to escalation of fear and tension in literature, sermons, and attitudes?

I can see you have not investigated further on my hint on the italians and the changing of immigration laws from the 1900-1924. And the express limitation of the numbers of Sicilians. I would ask Frank Sinatra on his experience in Hoboken.

There was widespread bias against catholic influx at that time.

Just as in the 1500's the Ottoman Pasha was a lauded ally, friend and trading partner of the Protestant nations (Sweden, England, Northern Germany, The Dutch Republic, against the vile "whore of Rome" which would be the Holy Roman Empire.

I was visiting Nuwara Eliya in Sri Lanka a couple of years ago to see what happened to the AICF project. (It's a school again.) We had to watch for militant Buddhist along the way. Who would have thought?

Well as I speak the Russian Baltic Fleet is crossing the North Sea in an attempt to reach the Mediteranean by next week. Nato fleet is closely monitoring the fleet that is about to destroy the Islamists at Aleppo and "Dabiq" which is the place where the Mahdi army would fight the infidels. Well they stand no change. The Russians could beat the crap out of them from the British Channel. But that would of course cause offence to the Anglo Saxon world rulers.

nck, yes there was prejudice against Italian immigrants and Catholics earlier in American history but my illustration was meant now when that is basically past history. You bring out that earlier American immigration policy favored Protestants not Catholics, and you observe that that roughly correlates to hwa/wcg's parameters of definition of "Israel" (as the Protestant part of Europe). From what I pick up you suggest hwa's british-israelism in agreement with that correlation was in some sense being used as or an instrument of American State Dept. policy.

I have not heard that argument before. I can't see it. I think the definition of which lands were "Israel" in the hwa/wcg/hoeh system and the immigration preference for Protestant European immigrants is coincidence. Germany was considered Israel by british-Israelites in the 19th century but lost their Israelite status when Britain went to war with Germany in WW1. Or rather, some 19th century British-Israelites thought Germany was Israel whereas the Assyria identity also was floated by other british-Israelites 19th century, but with ww1 Germany basically lost its claim to be Israelite in british-Israelites' eyes. I don't know how Italy was regarded by 19th century British-israelites--a detail which could be researched--but the wcg had Italy as Chaldeans from Ham based on a paper by Ernest Martin. (From my memory, Martin argued that Italians are numerically more from Roman slaves than Romans, and that the Roman slaves were Babylonians or Chaldeans from Ham, was the gist of the argument.) One possibility is Italy's being part of the Axis with Germany, at war with Britain/U.S., is what could have caused them to become or become confirmed as "gentiles" in the wcg world of british-Israelism.

In any case as discussed before I know of no evidence that WCG/HWA was wittingly being used by anyone, nor evidence that any state agency was directly using HWA/RCG unwittingly, in the early decades of hwa's work. The similarity between israel-identity nations and America's immigration policy preferences is not enough, since both have separate histories and causes. I think HWA's success with his form of British-Israelism mixed with end of the age prophecy was an historical accident, a symptom of the times, and not an operation planned by anyone other than HWA. There were others running around with british-Israel ideas in Church of God 7Day circles but HWA happened to be the one who succeeded with it in a big way.

Your 20:54 summary is quite good. I have no trouble with you summarizing in the way you did.

-I like for instance that you are able to view BI as an ideology instead of a "bible based doctrine".

-Ideologies are used and abused for political purposes. Just in the sense that ISIL has absolutely nothing to do with Islam. It is a political ideology. Or perhaps Zionism which is a political ideology which at one time was inseparable from the racial "pure" Jews. So it becomes confused what is "race", what is "religion" and what part is "political ideology."

-Do you hold the position that the Spanish Inquisition in the 1500 murdered "millions" or at least hundreds of thousands of protestants and burned them at the stake? Latest studies confirm that it did not come close to a tenth or perhaps a 5th of that number.

Albeit I am not catholic at all I am a student of propaganda and these inflated numbers are a direct result of the extreme success of the propaganda of the protestant cause. And the printing press which was freely available in these nations.

Now why would I shift the conversation to 1500 protestantism?Your citing of 19th century BI makes it clear to me that you have not been in contact with the origins of the "ideology" identification of protestants with "the people of Israel."

When you read 16th century printed propaganda in the form of sermons or songs or pamphlets it becomes pretty clear that the protestant Dukes are likened to Moses who is leading his people out of Egyptian idolatry. That the protestants are lead of the "whoredom" of the Holy Roman Empire like the people of Israel. That it is Gods deliverance of the protestants that caused the Spanish Armada to flee. (a still repeated argument by armstrongist to this day). In the 19th century the british propagandists make it clear that it is Jesus who walked the green pastures of England. That London is the New Jerusalem. That it is the Welsh troops at Isandwandla and Rourkes Drift that "walk this barren land." That is the British and Dutch Tribes settling South Africa. etc etc etc Sorry for my sudden shift from 1500 to 1900. But you get the drift.

So my point is we are looking at an ideology of the white man that was rampant until 1990 in the country clubs of Georgia. And I am not talking blacks no Jews with billions of dollars on their accounts could not get into the country club. It was not economic, nor social, nor religious it was ideology what prohibited the membership.

Now it will go to far in how this ideology shaped the State Department that consisted for a large part of Yale alumni. But it was pretty clear that the great Cold War warrior Ronald Reagan was conducting a battle not against a defunct economic state but against an EVIL empire. That is not rational. That is ideology driven. And hwa did everything possible to show his respect for Ronald Reagan in personally picking his pictures for the PT.

Both Reagan and HWA were great believers in the linearity of history. That history had a beginning and would have an end as predicted in the bible. The Soviets were very much aware that Ronald Reagan was on a sacred mission a mission he shared with that other world leader that like him felt that they were delivered from death for a cause after being shot at work.

Now as you can see. My writing in this post has not been coherent AT ALL. Mostly due to my fast typing and limited time.I hope that at least you can see that I am in no way attacking you perhaps only adding different insight. But that my view stems from a wider view than just 19th century BI.

And yes BI is in no way the leading ideology that shaped the USA. It is one of many. Like masonry. But to insert masonry in the discussion now would be completely distracting and open a can of worms where I would have BB accusing me of conspiracy again and I would be "fighting" a battle on 2 fronts. (since you bring up Dr Reah (not martin).

btw I am in no way against whites or something. But I share with NEO and other commenters that a lot of people wouldn't even recognize their prejudice if it was explained to them since it is ingrained or has become part of a culture that due to multiple reasons has become wildly succesful in its execution. That is indeed a great feat. But now that a natural economic equilibrium seems to be restored and power shifts back to the natural leader China a lot of people become confused and vote for the one that promises to bring american coal back to production.

Wow. From the Great Armada to American Coal production.As Miquel de Rodente said. Please only respond to that that you might find most interesting or peculiar. I might go into more detail on that particular subject. Usually I have no feed back loop in what might be considered "interesting" only in what some consider lunacy. Usually that what people consider lunacy in what I say is based on the highest of learning and what they consider fact or truth is when I am joking or being sarcastic.

NCK, the vast number of people alive today live in the here and now. Their reasons for believing what they believe are rooted in the present, not some long forgotten philosophies or ideologies of the 18th or 19th centuries. That would be like Armstrongism, which attributed everything they didn't like to Babylonian paganism. That is not to say that there were not influences. Probably the greatest example of influences would be twentieth century attitudes in the American Southeast, which were still very much influenced by the Civil War. And those attitudes were so widespread and pervasive that they would have been difficult to deny. We from the North had studied the Civil War in history classes, but it did not loom on a daily basis for us as the huge and influential event that it did for our counterparts growing up in the South.

Had I never heard of Armstrongism, there was nothing in my surroundings, education, or daily experiences which would have made me conscious of that. Manifest Destiny, yes. Protestant influences on the founding, yes. The wide group of white minorities, and the African slaves and Native Americans present during the foundational years of our country, yes. But nothing learned from school or family about the US being a new, modern day incarnation of Israel. In fact, if anything, Israel was associated with Jews. Although the allies rescued massive numbers of Jews during WW-II, there was much anti-Jewish prejudice in the US. That is not to say that maybe some prominent politicians didn't know about BI, or were not influenced by it, but it was not overt and pervasive. At best, it was a viewpoint held by a very small minority.

nck, I see that you are giving a picture of a wider cultural studies context to the hwa/british-israelism phenomenon in America, arguing that it is just one variant of a larger self-understanding of white Protestants running America and the British Empire, a sense of being divinely chosen and entitled due to being Israel. I see that your point is this wider ideology combining race (whiteness) and religion (Protestant Christianity) and imperial power (British Empire and America).

And true enough, the pilgrims, the Puritans, the Protestant colonists of America did have ideas of being Israel metaphorically with british-Israelism belief being a sort of literalism or subset of the wider belief.

One significant exception--I think--however: the Quakers, who at their height in 1700s colonial America I believe were about the second most prominent religious identity of whites in North America next to Puritans. But Puritans--dissident English Protestants with theocratic notions that they were the "one true church" implemented in civil government-- became dominant, the "center" of white American identity, and Quakers lost both political power and numbers. Quakers founding Pennsylvania had an almost eschatological sense of the colony being "a peaceable kingdom", "a holy experiment", and such. And yet I do not think Quakers spoke the language or self-understanding of claiming themselves or their colony was "Israel" metaphorically or literally. Quakers also were not part of the genocides of Native Americans and were notable for having bought the land and paid for it by peaceful treaties and having good relations with Native Americans.

OK nck, you're expanded my thinking a bit. In the sense of cultural history and context, in which British-Israelism is part of a larger tapestry of the whole ideology of "Israel"/Puritanism/noble British Empire/"white man's burden"/Manifest Destiny/Protestant white entitlement and supremacy to land, natural resources, and military power ... OK, that is a real analysis, that rings true. The argument being that hwa/british-Israelism was a variant manifestation of a larger context, in a variant gargoyle-like form, but of a larger context. And that focusing solely on hwa/british-Israelism as if it occurred in a vacuum that happened on its own misses the larger context, a larger context that is part of history that should be looked at more reflectively.

I am trying to paraphrase in a way that bypasses notions of conspiracy theory and understands this instead as cultural history, analogous to Edward Baptist's "The Half Has Never Been Told" as well as other books bringing out things on American slavery that are factual and stunning but not well known, "the half never told". This is in the genre of ignored history that is not secret except that it is little known or recognized, lost to cultural memory, deep-sixed in national consciousness, "the half never told".

If we want to make some random associations, consider that Jerry Falwell Jr.'s office is in the former home of Carter Glass who spent much time writing bills there, including as congressman the Glass-Owen Act of 1913 and as senator the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933.

-----

And that's just it -- random, irrelevant associations, some of which have extremely dubious provenance.

-The ordinary person in WWII would have enlisted for all the good reasons like fighting for freedom, liberating the oppressed etc etc. That is all true and actually very commendable.Who would have bothered with the larger strategic concepts at stake. Like markets for american products. Not the average person in the here and now (1942)

-The average person in todays election is concerned for a job and some fun in life. I was not mocking those concerns when I stated that the wealth of the average american is being transferred to other nations as the new equilibrium. That today billions of people profit from the same pie that used to profit the few. And yes 300 million is just a few on a global scale.

So yes it is hard on many to close the steel mills and the coal mines etc etc. But my analysis does not concern "the average" person in the here and now when I speak about the billions. It is not stealing of american wealth. It is a reshuffle to a new order.

-Of course it loomed on you. In the seventies there even was a Southern President elected stemming from the farming south who based his entire foreign policy on "christian morality." The next president was even stranger in his apocalyptic predictions that brought the soviet union to its knees knowing that this was a man who would not yield as he was driven by linear thinking that the world would end....

The vast number of average persons living today and now would believe Santa Clause has been around since the birth of Christ. Who would want to know that "we" invented the guy in 1930 for the exact purpose of selling a brown sugary drink.

NEO in his personal account has not contributed one word to political parties, ideologies or prominent politicians. On the contrary he has focussed largely on recurring and latent thought patterns present among large swaths of people.

What do the ordinary people need to know really on how things came to be?

Speaking about the thirties my point is indeed based on a very small minority and I pointed at Yale. As a matter of fact some families have been around from the time China was enslaved by opium until present presidential canditates. The same families but different and modern outlook on life. Of course it is not the strongest that survives. It is the most adaptable.

So yes BI served its purpose in its time. And now there is something new.

Even Christianity was introduced in the empire for that very reason. Or do you suppose emperor Constantine was a devout Christian himself. No of course not. But the people need direction. And marketeers are to provide that direction. And leaders should point the way of course.

Speaking about Israel.I believe a number of interesting main stream books have been written on how it came to be that the entire American bible belt believes what I just said. That thousands of evangelicals celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles some flocking to Jerusalem and many never heard of armstrongism.

How it came to be that there is a not be broken tie between the heartland and Israel while there is absolutely NO strategic reason to protect that nation. (and this is from neo conservative source)

How did the vast majority of the american heartland come to believe that?That is not an accident or by circumstance. This has been a massive lobby that has turned a jew hating christian heartland into one almost identifing with Israel.

I am not against it at all. I am not attacking it. I am merely making a point that what you call "the vast number" are usually not aware of what they think and why they think this and how that came to be.

Man I start sounding like Herbert Armstrong himself. Perhaps because just like him in his early days I have in common with him that we sit/sat in boardrooms and decide on what the people are going to think next about the new product months ahead before the people know what they are going to like.

And you are well aware that this goes for ideology and politics aswell. And yes ideology that worked in the past might just not work in 2016.

Therefore a subject like this has no place on the blogs attacking the splinters. For they are lost in ideologies past. But a discussion like this might just evolve on a blog where people are supposed to have one more brain cell and know something about how the board works. It is not about individual people. At the most about categories or segments.

Perhaps I should just delete all I wrote. Copy and edit your analysis. Send it back for approval and then perhaps have my name in small letters somewhere on the inside of the back cover. I like your summary and can expand privately on that basis.

And yes I am certainly trying to bypass "conspiracy." I happen to believe that some people really and truly believe in what they are tought. I am not someone who supposes that hwa "plotted" it all. I feel he really believed what he believed but did not have the talent to manage it all. Of course this was the vaccuum filled by Stanley Rader. But that is another subject. To believe that hwa plotted it all cunningly that would be in the realm of conspiracy thinking. I am more practical and relate my experience in the fold to my experience with those in the boardroom. And actually my experience is, and please keep it a secret for the masses, for they might revolt, that the people in the boardroom many times don't know..... That's why they go and talk in Davos. To learn from equals and get input from well......think tanks.. be it ideologically driven or not.

And to answer Black Opps on his remark about hwa's choosing of feast sites.Perhaps for you this choosing was a random act. I am 100% sure hwa did not choose randomly.It is my professional experience that tells me that "association" meant everything to hwa.

I answered the following on banned.

5:19

I see what you mean.

For me it is not so hard to imagine where hwa would choose the first feast sites.As an avid news enthusiast and "self styled" reporter on current events he would be very much aware of locations that would be befitting toward his ideology.

I would remind you of his 1947 european trip where he decided not to have ambassador college in lugano but liked geneva better for its diplomatic activity and intelectual logistics.

I am being misrepresented, since I have said nothing about how Herbert Armstrong chose Feast sites. In fact, the poster can't even get the avatar right.

The poster's comments represent this logic:

A=B; B=C; C=D; therefore, J=L and M=Z.

If you don't accept this as true, you are a liar. You are wrong 99% of the time. You are also crazy. I give you six URLs to prove that this is true. None of them are relevant. If you check them and call him on it, he will protest that you will find proof at Ivy League Schools (which is rubbish, since it wasn't true in the first place and there is no said proof).

British Israelism has always been irrelevant and racist. Except for Herbert Armstrong and his stupid wrong prophecies, no would have paid attention to it except for an odd intellectual academic curiosity. Of course, there is a British Israelism society, but it's not centered in the United States and while some of the Protestant clergy revel in the 'truth' (which it is not), it is basically unseen. As for racist, it promotes Britain (and to a lesser extent the United States) as a chosen people -- lost tribes of Israel, even perhaps greater than the Jews in Palestine. Some of the white separatists are steeped in British Israelism because it promotes their narrow view of race to make whites supreme.

British Israelism has quite a long history, even possibly back to Oliver Cromwell in Sixteenth Century, but it is just a crazy idea that some small segment of people may find as a curiosity.

BI promotes one race over all the others under the guise that it has God's support. That's ridiculous, of course, but it makes for heady hubris, or if you are English, HuBrits.

It s ok black opps. Everyone can see that your research skills are nill to zero.

Why would you suppose did the press make such a fuss about trumps peacefull transfer of power this week?

Because the system is rigged toward hillary?

No man get real. An entire army or should I say militia is awaiting for a signal to wreak havoc with versions of your irrelevant ideology in their kit. Just as the other guy saw the waco signal and the government called him a traumatized lone wolf. But the oklahoma bombing was entirely ideology driven from compounds. It is not irrelevant. It is a greater threat to american democracy at present than islamism. Nck

Scroller. I took a little more time to read your summary. I might just conclude that my work is done. It is even better than i first thought. It looks like my dung (as black opps would likely summarize) produced something edible. You might not even agree with the analysis I recognize that, but your summary at least restores my confidence in my former brothers abilities and therefore by extension my own choices. Perhaps it only took you two minutes. But as leonard cohen spent 2.5 years on hallelujah and asked bob dylan on one of his hits. Bob dylan answered 10 minutes for his hitsong. So time invested would not be a good key performance indicator. But thanks either way. Nck

"NEO in his personal account has not contributed one word to political parties, ideologies or prominent politicians. On the contrary he has focussed largely on recurring and latent thought patterns present among large swaths of people."

I backed off because I was having a lot of trouble parsing through some of the ideas presented here. Let me tell you how I see BI in context with every thing else in the world:

* I believe that BI is a conspiracy theory. It appeals to people who like conspiracy theories - illuminati, ancient aliens, etc. You find these people scattered throughout the Armstrongist congregations. Hoeh said there was a great conspiracy to hide the identity of true Israel. The Irish monks altered genealogies to conceal the Israelitish identity of the British.

* I believe that BI is occult. The validity of this truth may not be known by direct methods. Science, such as genetics, cannot be believed. Knowledge of the identity of Israel is a mystical phenomenon. That is why Armstrongists will discount any evidence that contradicts this special knowledge. Genetics means nothing to them. Genetics is just an attempt by the Dark Side to throw up a smokescreen.

* HWA's BI is uncoupled from politics, immigration, intelligence agencies, health food, organic food, the Cold War and Congressional legislation - almost anything you can free associate. Herbert read a book and liked it. It made him feel good about himself. It stroked his ego. So it became "obvious" truth. He wrote his own version of the story and published it.

HWA's minions elaborated and extended the doctrine. Racism may have been an unforeseen consequence of the idea. I don't think Herbert set out to purposely become the ecclesiastical equivalent of the Grand Dragon of the Klu Klux Klan. This would be an embarrassment to someone who later was energetically trying to ingratiate himself with world leaders. But this Klankraft outcome is what happened and the WCG became ideologically a part of the Invisible Empire. And Herbert's ideological mantle was passed down to all the myriad splinter groups via men who were more than ready to receive that mantle - sons of the Confederacy - men who believe that Jesus was not a Jew by redefining the meaning of the term Jew. What some of the Armstrongist leaders believe coincides almost point for point with Klan belief.

Except for a few thousand people, nobody in the world remotely believes this bogus BI concept. Unfortunately, its limited popularity is interpreted by its followers as an evident sign that they possess special revelation and they are, therefore, special people. Its instantiation within the WCG is really only about Herbert's ravenously hungry ego.

NEOI agree with almost everything in 15:55 except the 5th paragraph.As a matter of fact if few more valid complaints on the volume will be made I might offer to delete my contributions under the express condition that all of your and scrollers post remain.In this time and on this express subject much time has been devoted to BI and racism. Which is the actual topic at hand.You have alluded many times to “the sons of the confederacy” however.That could serve another topic. I believe it is impossible to understand rcg, hwa without understanding 1880-1933 america. After all we are speaking about a persona born in 1892. You might not like Madonna the singer or any of her songs. But I would use her in 2098 to explain some of your current conditions and beliefs even if you haven’t even heard of this New York girl.Early 1900 was a period of rapid Industrialization.AC was founded in houses of people that became immeasurably wealthy in that time.The vast majority was poor. The new city dwellers felt displaced. Between 1880 and 1914 more than 16 million arrived and lived in squalor. Social conditions in the cities and agricultural areas where a disaster. So there was a paradox here. Reaction: American Federation of Labor 1886, Interstate Commerce Act 1887, Sherman Anti Trust Act 1890.There was also an IDEOLOGICAL reaction from the rural areas. Agriculture versus Industry. The “original” small town America versus the new Industrial and city dwelling America.For many Americans the transition was as difficult and painful as it was for immigrants. The immigrants being politically weak retreated in their ethnically homogeneous neighborhoods. Whereas many “born” Americans resisted fiercely.They believed the power of the republic was rooted in small communities. Small farmers and small town citizens ruling and rooted in some form of protestantism. Every weakness in that system was fought with large scale “revival and tent meetings.” Convert and convert again.

Politics was a direct extension of religion. Differences of thought would not only make one a political adversary. One would be a sinner in need of conversion. This culture pattern was enforced with two mytiical themes.=The Frontier Myth (Solidarity among citizens of all classes building a city.)=The Agrarian Myth {thomas jefferson) Small farmers are superior in thought. Reaction 1-A reversal to the old ways. Scapegoat would be the immigrant. Wasn’t everthing downhill since the coming of the small dark haired mediteranean and eastern european type? Stop immigration or wither. Those already here needed to “convert” conform and reeducated. Fear and insecurity was rampant.

Reaction 2Acceptance of the new (Industrializatian) submitted under the rules of the old regime. Large scale corporation and monopolies should be reduced to smaller units. The one power to do this was the government.

Reaction 3Again Idealistic and Utopian. The development of large scale entities should serve the social and cultural values of small scale ideals of the Republic.A fusion of the ideals of Jefferson and Hamilton.Re Edward Bellamy: Looking Backward 1887 sold a stunning 500.000 copies.It tells the story of centralisation for the furtherance of american small town values “The Great Trust” and “The National Party”. It reads like “The wonderful tomorrow what it will be like”. 1887And of course it is the United States that shows the entire world the road to this utopia. (a precursor of rockefeller’s united nations model)Looking Backward gives a fascinating insight in the psychological universe of the protestant movement 1880-1910. The world is a world of order, decency, culturally and socially homogenous.

The protestant world/universe encompassed every aspect of society. Sin had become inexistent.Intollerance is present in all three Idealtypes of reaction.

1889 spawned 162 Bellamy clubs and inspired “The Nationalist movement.” And merged into the Populist movement. Then moved on to the Progressive movement of Theodore Roosevelt and later Woodrow Wilson of League of Nations fame.

Harding/ Coolidge (reprenting small town America both extremely incapable but wildly popular)

1920 Small town america beats the cities.-Prohibition-1924 restriction of immigration-Rise of KKK-Cultural agression of rising fundamentalism

It would be more fun for yourselves to research what realy happened in Chicago during that time when hwa was a business representative.Anyway lets limit to immigration laws.

1917 Regulations on immigrants to be able to write and read. Unfortunately and to the surprise of many this did not help since most were able to write and read.Agitation increased with shameless racism. The pureness of the Anglo Saxon race was threatened by Polish, Italian and Jewish immigrants.1924 The national origins actQuta restrictions from certain nations. England, Sweden, Norway and Germany could not even fill those quota. Immigration from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe came to a sudden halt. Asian immigration was restricted completely.1920 KKK profesionalises and became profitable. KKK is at best a local attempt to maintain theh political and cultural status quo. In favor of maintaining traditional patterns and against everything else catholics, jews, blacks and sin in general.4 milion members in its heyday. (Especially Oregon Portland as it lies North West as promised) Read ou resident journalist essays.

However the Cause of all this change (unbridled capitalism) was unstoppable and in fact lauded by the reactionaries themselves. Far scale erosion of the original populist ideas in the 1920’s led to an embrace of capitalism.

This is the cultural paradox of the reactionaries. The very machine that eroded small town morals (capitalism) was embraced by the same.

So I might just agree with NEO.KKK, Prohibition, The Scope case might just have been “fair ground attractions” against a large scale revolution of mass production and durable consumer goods.There was a looming danger that teenagers would neck and pet in daddies car. But dad would stilll buy the car on lease.

Now what does this have to do with hwa. I don’t know. But it was nice talking to you.

Wow. I was just readin dennis his post on forgiveness on banned. In the reactions you can witness the paradox of rampant intollerant protestant conservatism in combination with the use of latest technology produced by capitalism that eroded the foundation of the very values they promote. The paradox of america. Somtimes combined or represented in just one single person. Nck

61 comments by nck. That's got to be some kind of record. My critiques would be that in the course of that, he attacks someone who is known to be one of the more sane and rational voices on these blogs. Also, he poses as the all knowing teacher as if presenting priceless gems that some "finally get" so that his work is done and he can remove his posts. Those acts are rather telling. I don't believe I'd want to do Dos Equis with this guy. Clearly, he's not the worlds most exciting man. (See Dos Equis beer commercials for reference)

Yes, time to move on. I've been sidelined for a couple of weeks, but hope to be back on deck soon. Meantime this thread can be closed and nck can take a breather and ponder the virtues of staying on topic.

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